Ripple Effects: An Acolytes of Chaos Story
by ProjectCastor27
Summary: Part 3/8 in the Acolytes of Chaos saga. Sometimes the smallest changes can have the biggest impacts later on. A series of interconnected one-shots focusing on the Marvel elements of the AOC universe. Companion fic to The Xehanort War. Takes place from pre-Iron Man 1 to post-Ant Man. AU after Captain America: The Winter Soldier
1. The Dark World

**I know I said I was going to wait until the weekend to post this, but I had a lot of free time on my hands.**

 **Fair warning, this fic is extremely heavy on the continuity of the Kingdom Hearts games and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (movies, TV shows, and Netflix shows), so if you haven't read at least basic summaries for the plots for any of the above, there's going to be a lot of plot elements that will confuse you in later chapters.**

 **Anyway, hello everyone. For those of you haven't read my Kingdom Hearts 3 prediction fic The Xehanort War, I suggest you at least skim through it, as this is sort of a sequel to that story, so you'll probably be lost. Not everyone will want to read it, but the events of this fic don't reference that fic a lot so I'll just leave explanations for those references as needed. Don't expect any Kingdom Hearts characters to show up though beyond a reference every once in a while (although there will be a few guest appearances eventually). Ripple Effects is about setting up the Marvel elements of the overall story I've got planned for The Xehanort War's sequels.**

 **And for those of you who have read The Xehanort War and its first sequel, welcome to the second installment of the Acolytes of Chaos saga. Like Regroup and Rebuild, Ripple Effects will be a collection of One-Shots. But unlike the previous entry in this saga I've been writing, the stories in Ripple Effect are less connected, taking place over the course of several decades as opposed to a single month. As far as the Kingdom Hearts timeline is concerned, this story actually spans from decades before Birth by Sleep to three years after Kingdom Hearts 3. This isn't going to be a long, elaborate story like The Xehanort War was, though. This is mainly a series of One-Shots dealing with how the Marvel and Kingdom Hearts aspects of the universe of TXW tie together, with a few loose over-arching plot threads along the way.**

 **I own nothing. Kingdom Hearts belongs to Disney and Square. All Final Fantasy characters who appear or are referenced belong to Square Enix. All Marvel Characters/Locations referenced belong to Marvel. All other properties mentioned belong to their respective owners.**

 **Just want to outline this for those who aren't familiar with how I handle different forms of dialogue in story:**

"Talking"

 _Thinking_

 ** _"_** ** _Singing"_**

 **"** **Speaking in a different language"**

 _"_ _Written Text"_

* * *

 **Episode 1: The Dark World**

 **Svartalfheim – 2,987 B.C.**

 **4,989 Years before Birth By Sleep**

 _At last,_ the armored figure thought to himself as he looked up through the top hatch of his flagship at the Nine Realms converging above him. _After three thousand years of warfare, we will finally plunge Ygdrasil into Darkness where it belongs. And there are not enough Keyblade Wielders to interfere this cycle._ In the past, the wielders of the Keyblade arrogantly policed countless worlds in the name of keeping balance. _As if balance can exist when Darkness is ground under the armored heel of Light,_ the figure thought with disdain as he walked from the top of his ship across the mesa toward where the battle was taking place.

 **"** **Malekith,"** his Lieutenant, Algrim called out as the leader of the Dark Elves strode up to the cliff overlooking the battle going on below. **"Asgard's forces are upon us."** Malekith nodded as he looked down at the small Asgardian strike force being swiftly annihilated by his troops. Only for the tide to begin turning an instant later as the multicolored pillar of the Bifrost pierced the skies of Svartalfheim, striking the surface and disgorging Asgardian reinforcements under the command of Bor Burison. With the arrival of King Bor and a platoon of Asgard's mightiest warriors, the Dark Elves began dropping like flies.

 **"** **Send in the Kursed,"** Malekith ordered as he watched the tide turn against him. Algrim briefly walked away to relay his superior's order. While the elite Dark Elf warriors used the eponymous stones to permanently enhance their powers enough that they began to easily over power the Asgardian fools and tip the scales back in their favor, Malekith looked up at the large portals leading to the other realms of Ygdrasil hanging in the sickly gray sky above him. It was time. Time to plunge the worlds back into Darkness. To avenge his wife and child.

Malekith had only been a lieutenant in the Dark Elf army during the last Cycle. He hadn't always been the remorseless conqueror he was now. He'd actually been an advocate of peace between the Asgardians and his people. Until the day it all came crumbling down. The day he met Bor, crown prince of Asgard. Although the Dark Elves had been born from the Darkness when it consumed Midgard at the climax of the very first Keyblade War millions of years ago, they were not the spawn of hell as the mortals and Aesir believed.

For all those countless millennia, the Dark Elves remained hidden on Svartalfheim, developing their advanced technology not to conquer the universe as the Keyblade Wielders kept warning the human public, but to protect themselves from persecution. Malekith was only a mid-ranked commander in the Dark Elf armies when he met Bor. The Asgardian prince had been trying to sneak into the dark world in a feeble attempt at boosting his own personal glory by defeating the "demons" that lived there.

Malekith had swiftly disarmed the arrogant prince, critiquing his fighting technique before politely telling him to return to Asgard and leave the Dark Elves alone. Despite the warning, Bor returned a few weeks later, and the process repeated until Bor finally started conversed with him civilly. From there, an unlikely friendship was born, and with Bor's change in attitude, Malekith came believe that the rest of the realms might actually accept Dark Elves as their equals. He'd discussed the idea with Bor on one of his visits to the dark world, and while the Asgardian prince had said he hoped it would happen eventually, his face appeared uncomfortable. If only the elf had known what the prince's discomfort would lead to.

That had been a week before Bor's coronation. A few weeks after that last meeting, a strike team of warriors comprised of both Keyblade Wielders and Asgardians launched a surprise on Svartalfheim, releasing a synthesized gas into the atmosphere engineered to be poisonous to all life on the dark world present at the time of its release. Hundreds of thousands of innocent elven men, women, and children perished that day. Though the conflict with Asgard predated the previous Keyblade War, Malekith still remembered the tragedy of that day.

He remembered running from the clouds of toxic gas with his wife Nathalis carrying their son Olenir in her arms. He remembered the Keyblade Wielders firing their spells into the crowds of fleeing elves. He remembered being separated from his family in the mad rush to board the spacecraft that would take them all to safety. He remembered forcing his way through the crowd to reach his wife and child, only to be forced back into the ship by the flow of bodies. He remembered screaming at the top of his lungs in incoherent grief and rage as he watched his family vanish in the onrushing toxic fog while the ship's boarding hatch closed.

The survivors of the Light's attempted genocide of their people fled to the nearest planet with a breathable atmosphere. Of a species whose population once numbered in the millions, only five thousand survived the slaughter, two thirds of which were unarmed women and children. Eventually, they sent a scout ship back to Svartalfheim to see if it was safe to return, and upon their return, they reported that King Bor himself had been the one to order the use of biological warfare against the Dark Elves. And yet their king Karasiv refused to take action, preferring instead that their people should remain hidden and avoid conflict.

But Karasiv's subjects did not want to hide in the dark, afraid of being attacked without reason. No, the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim wanted justice for what Asgard and the so-called "Guardians of Light" had done. Enraged by the death of his family, Bor's betrayal, and Karasiv's cowardice, Malekith deposed the Dark Elf King and took the throne himself. With the support of his people, he promised that with him as their king, they would seek vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them, and if the people of the Nine Realms believed the Dark Elves to be destructive conquerors, well that was what they would get.

 _You will be avenged, Nathalis,_ he silently vowed as he turned around and strode towards the large stone mechanism used to house the Aethir. He would have preferred to use the completed Gauntlet of the First Keyblade Master for what he was about to do. But since the other components had been scattered across the stars, the Reality Stone would have to suffice. He smiled in anticipation as the pillar lifted, exposing the Aethir hovering in the air in a liquid state. But milliseconds before he could absorb it into his bloodstream, the Bifrost tore into the earth right where the pillar stood, tearing the Infinity Stone from his grasp.

Enraged, Malekith unsheathed his blade and tore through the Asgardian warriors who charged out of the rainbow bridge in a pathetic attempt at a surprise attack. He killed them all and charged towards the open portal, but it closed before he could enter it, leaving behind scorch marks on the surface of the dark world. With the Aethir no longer in their possession, the Dark Elves were clearly fated to lose the battle. His body trembling in silent fury, Malekith initiated his failsafe plan, activating a powerful electromagnetic pulse that caused all of the Dark Elf warships to deactivate and crash down on the Asgardian armies below. All but one.

 **"** **Their deaths will mean our survival,"** he told Algrim as the two elves walked towards the side of the mesa opposite the battle. **"This war is far from over."** As they neared the cliff, their flagship, the _Nathalis_ , rose up for them to board. The destruction of the fleet was no great loss to Malekith. The warships were manned by skeleton crews anyway, since they lacked the numbers sufficient to properly crew them. Except for one. Ever since the Asgardians used biochemical weapons to devastate the surface of Svartalfheim, Malekith knew that the Dark Elves needed to have a plan to ensure that their race would survive even if Asgard were to invade.

So the _Nathalis_ was designated a refugee ship. It was still armed and capable of defending itself, but its purpose for the remainder of the war was to protect the few women and children who survived the poisoning of Svartalheim's atmosphere, along with a contingent of warriors to protect the families should the vessel ever be boarded by enemy troops. That way even if the Dark Elves lost the war, their species and their families would survive. With their leader and his second-in-command aboard, the _Nathalis_ cloaked itself before engaging its warp drive and vanishing into the Realm of Darkness.

As the convergence ended, Malekith and the other passengers aboard the _Nathalis_ went into hibernation. The battle had been stressful for everyone, warrior and civilian alike. So every Dark Elf male, female, and child aboard their last ship climbed into a hibernation pod on the upper decks. Once inside, they would rest in stasis and recover from the strain of fighting and running. Of fearing for the safety of their loved ones. When the convergence happened again in five thousand years, they would return to the Realm of Light, and they would take revenge on the Keyblade Wielders and Asgardians who sought to exterminate them.

* * *

 **While I enjoy Thor: The Dark World, I really wish they'd developed Malekith more as a character, so in the Acolytes of Chaos saga I'm fleshing him out some more. I decided to have his backstory be something that could be plausible in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while also tying into to the Kingdom Hearts mythology. Also, I know I said this would span several decades, but I decided to include Malekith in my overall story fairly late in the planning stages, so I threw in the distant prologue at the beginning to help with the world building. Malekith and Algrim's spoken dialogue comes from the opening of Thor: The Dark World.**

 **Now for those of you who haven't or don't want to read The Xehanort War, explanation time:**

 ***The Keyblade War: In the universe of The Xehanort War, the Keyblade works for the Kingdom Hearts universe the way Harmonic Convergence works in The Legend of Korra. It basically happens every 10,000 years and Earth either breaks apart like it does in KH canon or keeps on ticking for another 10,000 years. When characters who know that talk about cycles, that's what they're referring to. The reason there are fewer Keyblade Wielders after the previous one is because Daybreak Town (hub world for the Kingdom Hearts browser/smartphone game (as with most Kingdom Hearts games, came out in Japan first. US release date has yet to be confirmed) Kingdom Hearts X (pronounced Key) set during the time period shortly before the Keyblade War begins) was ground zero for when the original world split apart into the smaller worlds Kingdom Hearts fans all know in the games, and 3/4 of the Keyblade Wielders who fought in the Keyblade War were killed when the whole "world consumed by darkness thing" happened.**

 **Back on the subject of the chapter, Christopher Eccleston (Malekith's actor for those who don't know) confirmed that scenes that were filmed for Malekith's backstory but ultimately cut from the finished movie revealed that he'd previously lost his wife and child (whose names (and in the kid's case gender) I made up for the purposes of this fic), and that there was a reason for why the Dark Elves all followed him. I used that information to construct a backstory for why Malekith wants to destroy the universe. I'm going to come back to the Dark Elves in another One-Shot later on.**

 **For this fic, a few things to note, the Kingdom Hearts elements adhere closely to canon, while the Marvel side of things is AU. Fair warning, this is going to start getting into mega-crossover territory later on, but only in regards to Disney properties like Kim Possible, Lilo & Stitch, etc. The overall story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the same, but certain things happen slightly or majorly different. **

**Now that that's all out of the way, next chapter, Wendy Darling finds some familiar faces waiting at her window a few years after her previous trip to Never Land.**


	2. Growing Up

**Just one last note about the previous chapter, despite their sympathetic backstory, the Dark Elves will not be getting the DILP treatment in this fic. They're still evil, I've just given them a sympathetic reason for** ** _why_** **they're evil. With the out of the way, on with the show. Since last chapter was Marvel-centric, this one is Kingdom Hearts/Disney centric.**

* * *

 **Episode 2: Growing Up:**

 **The Darling House – 1903**

 **99 Years before Birth By Sleep**

A gentle breeze blew through the open window of the girl's bedroom. Wendy Darling found it soothing as she looked up at the stars in the night sky. _I miss Peter,_ she thought to herself as she gazed up at the second star to the right. She could still find Never Land up in the sky even though she hadn't been there in three years. John and Michael still believed too. But she was afraid that sooner or later, they would all forget. She'd promised herself to never forget Never Land or Peter Pan, but deep down she was terrified that she would end up breaking that promise.

With a longing sigh, she closed the window and got ready to climb into bed when a soft thump came from the Nursery next door. Her back straightened as she made a beeline for the door. Sometime was wrong. Michael was the only one who still slept in the Nursery anymore, and he'd thrown his teddy bear against the wall during a tantrum enough times that she knew what it sounded like. What she head was not that sound. She raced into the room, ready for action, only to find a sight she hadn't expected to see.

Peter Pan and all the lost boys were standing there in the nursery trying to move quietly without waking anyone up. Her heart fluttered a bit when she saw Peter again and she raced over and gave him a hug. The lost boys all joined in, and though they kept their voices low to avoid waking her parents, they were loud enough to wake up Michael, who ran to fetch John before joining the group hug himself.

"What are you all doing here?" John asked when the hug finally ended.

"Well…" one of the lost boys replied nervously. "We kinda wanted to go out and see the world, but Peter wanted to stop and visit you guys first." So everyone started chatting quietly about what they'd been up to since their last visit to Never Land. After a few minutes, the Lost Boys asked if there was anything for them to eat, intending to let Peter have some time to talk to the Darlings by himself. John went to go get them some food from the kitchen (if all of them went downstairs they would surely wake his parents and none of the Darling children wanted to explain this to their parents at this hour) while Wendy, Michael and Pan moved over to his room.

"I missed you guys," Peter Pan said as John slipped in and quietly closed the door. "I know the Lost boys want to explore, but… in Never Land you stay young forever…. But I know what happens when people get old…" Wendy and John immediately understood what he was talking about. Michael was still a little too young to understand the concept of death, so they told him they'd explain when he got older.

"And I didn't want to just sit in Never Land and stay young while you kept getting older," he continued. "With the lost boys I felt more like a leader than a friend. Don't get me wrong, they're all great, but I never really felt like I could talk to them when I was scared or sad because then I wouldn't be invincible like they said I was. So many kids have visited Never Land over the years that I barely remember them. But you the three of you stood out. And I talked to Sora and his friend Kairi a bit. If I were ever to leave Never Land and grow up, I'd want to do it with you guys." Wendy blushed while John and Michael were impressed that Peter liked the three of them so much.

The Darling siblings quickly tackled the Boy Who (Until now at least) Never Grew Up in a big hug. Telling him that they would be happy to grow up with him too. After that, Michael and John went back to the Nursery to lay out a few ground rules for the Lost Boys. Since it was nighttime, they insisted that they all stay for at least one night before setting off on their journey to explore the world. That left Peter and Wendy alone in the room.

"I missed you," she said nervously. She knew that she'd developed a crush on him after her first visit to Never Land, but she knew he was oblivious to such things and wouldn't likely reciprocate even if he did.

"I missed you too," he replied. To her surprise, he appeared to be just as nervous as she was. "You were the one I missed the most actually." Then Peter Pan blushed, and Wendy realized that he was beginning to develop a bit of a crush on her, only he didn't know how to explain it. She smiled as they talked about Never Land for a little longer before John came back to his room to sleep. With that, Peter Pan hovered across the hallway and slipped into the nursery, but not before Wendy gave him a quick peck on the cheek goodnight before heading back to her own room. She smiled to herself when his cheeks turned red before she closed her door.

Despite their best efforts to keep Peter Pan and the Lost Boys hidden from their parents, their father discovered the extra children the following morning. While Michael blurted out that they were all from Never Land, Wendy and John knew from experience their father would never accept such an explanation, so they simply told their father that the boys were all orphans that they'd befriended out in the city who they'd been hiding in the house. (Which was partly true, since none of the Lost Boys could remember their biological parents who were in all likelihood dead)

Their father had been initially furious, but their mother had accepted the boys into the house without question. Since most of the Lost Boys remembered their real names, the Darlings helped them look to see if any of their biological relatives were still alive. Most of them still had family even if their parents were gone, and over time the number of children in the Darling house grew fewer and fewer.

Over the next eleven years, the children all grew up. John went off to University, with Michael only a few years away from joining him. The remaining Lost Boys who had forgotten their pre-Never Land names went off to see the world and explore and those who had found their original families eventually soon joined them. Over time, Peter Pan and Wendy's mutual crush blossomed into full blown romantic love, and they eventually got married. Despite the distance everyone had, they all kept in touch with each other, and none of them forgot Never Land.

* * *

 **If anyone's wondering what the point of that chapter was, you will find out later on ;)**

 **The conversation with Sora and Kairi that Peter Pan's referring to happened in the previous Xehanort War sequel, Regroup And Rebuild. His comments about the Lost Boys are based on my observation that in the Disney movies the Lost Boys are much younger than Peter Pan and that they idolize him enough that he couldn't really talk to them if something was bothering him. If you haven't read TXW and are confused by the timeline, the next chapter actually tackles that issue and explains it for newcomers.**

 **Next chapter, we visit the cast of Atlantis: The Lost Empire a few hours after Kairi and Riku leave. Explanations for that will come next chapter.**


	3. Finding An Empire

**Dialogue for the first part of the scene comes straight from the ending of Atlantis: The Lost Empire.**

* * *

 **Episode 3: Finding An Empire:**

 **Whitmore Mansion – 1914**

 **88 Years before Birth By Sleep**

"Now," the wealthy, white-haired man said as he put down the group photo and looked at the team of explorers seated before him in their finest clothes. "Let's go over it again. Just so we got it straight. You didn't find anything." They all knew that their expedition to find Altantis had been more successful than they'd ever dreamed. Instead of decaying undersea ruins they found a thriving underground civilization. But the world wasn't ready to know that just yet, so they were keeping it a secret for the time being. Which was why they had gathered in the parlor of Preston Whitmore's mansion to rehearse their cover story.

"Nope," Vinnie confirmed drolly. "Just a lot of rocks. And fish. Little fish… sponges."

"What happened to Helga?" Mr. Whitmore asked, reciting the question the reporters would inevitably ask at tonight's press conference.

"Well we lost her when a flamin' zeppelin came down on – " Cookie's uncensored ramblings were cut short when communications officer Wilhelmina Packard wacked him in the stomach with her umbrella, causing the chef to quickly change his answer to "missing."

"That's right," their employer nodded before moving on to the next practice question. "And Rourke?"

"Nervous breakdown," the team's physician, Joshua Sweet, answered casually. "You could say he went all to pieces."

"In fact," Cookie interjected. "You could say he was trans-a-morgified and then busted into a zillion little – " Mrs. Packard didn't even need to hit him with her umbrella again. The implied threat was enough to make Cookie change his answer to the more appropriate "missing."

"What about Milo?" the millionaire asked.

"Went down with the sub," chief engineer Audrey Ramirez answered, surprisingly cheerful for someone whose friend supposedly died. The conversation was interrupted when the team's geologist, Gaeton "Mole" Moliere, stripped off his clothes and dug himself into the nearest flower pot. While Dr. Sweet bemoaned the clearly unhinged dirt expert's behavior, Mr. Whitmore flipped through the photographs the team had brought back from their trip until he found a package from Milo containing an Atlantean crystal and a note. The millionaire smiled as he placed the crystal around his neck before moving on to the next order of business.

"So," Whitmore began, getting his employees' attention back on him. "After the press conference is over, are you going to try and head out on a Gummi Ship and see the worlds?" The two young Keyblade Wielders, Riku and Kairi had promised to send over a Gummi Ship for the expedition members to come explore the worlds of the Daybreak Coalition when they got the chance, but so far, whether due to the conflict with Xehanort or some other reason, they hadn't showed up yet.

"About that," Sweet replied. "We checked your library to see if you had anything on all the Keyblade stuff, and we found one book that had information, but it wasn't pretty." Audrey took over from there.

"According to the book," she continued seamlessly from where Sweet left off. "Most worlds are independent of each other, but some of them are Tethered. They're connected to Earth in a specific time period by invisible portals. Transport between Tethered worlds and the Earth of their time period is instantaneous and unnoticeable unless you know what to look for. Anyway, this X – Blade that Xehanort is trying to recreate has the power to put the shattered pieces of the original world back together, but because of how the Tethering works, anyone from a Tethered world who is caught away from their world when that happens will be cut off from their original time periods. We'd be stranded and never see our families again."

"And you think our world is Tethered." Whitmore finished. It was a statement, not a question.

"Definitely," Vinnie answered. "Those two kids' clothes were way too ahead of our time to be a coincidence. The fact that they didn't understand the concept of countries was another giveaway. As much as we all want to go explore the wonders of the universe, it's not worth never seeing our families again for."

"I understand," Whitmore said with a nod. "Since we're all staying here on Earth for the foreseeable future, I have a proposal. As far as we know the seven of us are the only people who know about the Keyblade and all the legends and conflicts associated with it. But since there are likely Tethered Worlds to other time periods…"

"Then there's got to be myths or urban legends based on times where Keyblade Wielders have been on Earth, right?" Vinnie guessed.

"Exactly," the eccentric billionaire answered. "So I propose we start our own little secret society for people in the world who know about the existence of the Keyblade and all the other worlds. We'll scour the world for every scrap of information. Every written record and ancient legend. We'll find people who met Keyblade Wielders personally. And since one day all the shattered pieces of the planet will glue themselves back together again, we'll help prepare the world for when it does happen."

Everyone in the room applauded the wealthy industrialist's idea, and quickly went on to discuss things like how they would keep it all a secret even as they prepared the world for the next time Keyblade Wielders showed up, or whether Milo and Kida would be willing to lend a hand. When they returned from Atlantis with the revelation of the ancient culture's survival, they immediately knew that the routes they had taken to and from the city on their first visit would be impractical in order to ever go back.

So Whitmore had sent out his most trusted employees to secretly search for alternate routes. And in less than three days they found hidden tunnels connecting the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico and Mammoth Cave, Kentucky to the underground highway that had led them to Atlantis in the first place. With a more practical means of travelling between Atlantis and the surface, the group was debating the idea of expanding the circle of who was able to know about the survival of Atlantis.

Obviously the press was out of the question but aside from a select few Whitmore Industries employees, the CEO himself had a few friends (mostly prominent authors) who he trusted to be discreet and maintain the secret, and the existence of a previously believed non-existent civilization with technology that was more advanced than anything existing today was something that the President of the United States should be kept in the loop on. With all those topics covered, the conversation turned towards coming up with a name for their little private club. Everyone wracked their brains over it until Vinnie came up with one that stuck.

"How about "the Society for Advanced Cultural Knowledge?"" the demolitions expert offered dramatically.

"You do realize the initials spell out S.A.C.K., right?" the doctor asked.

"Hey," Audrey protested. "If we're going to be a secret society why should we care what our acronym spells out? Besides, we _are_ going to be researching the impact of the Keyblade on our culture in a sense." Everyone nodded their heads in agreement, and after putting all the suggestions they'd come up with to a vote, the S.A.C.K. emerged as the winner. With the press conference happening in a little over an hour, Mr. Whitmore quickly ushered everyone out to the cars waiting to take them to their press conference. The next time a Keyblade Wielder set foot on Earth, members of S.A.C.K. would be on hand to help out.

* * *

 **So that should answer everyone's questions about the timeline. I came up with the concept of Tethered worlds when I was writing The Xehanort War as a way to explain how you can have worlds that are clearly set on earth like Hercules and the Hunchback of Notre Dame despite the fact that they are in different time periods. So for the Tethered portions of Atlantis it's 1914, but for Riku and Kairi it was 2015.**

 **The Xehanort War spoilers: in relation to KH3, this scene happens four days after Riku and Kairi leave the Atlantis world in TXW (Sora, Donald, and Goofy were busy elsewhere and Mickey was aboard the Gummi Ship to avoid making people panic at the sight of a talking mouse), the same day Xehanort dies.**

 **For those who have read my previous KH fics in this universe wondering why Sora and Kairi were able to visit Never Land after KH3 even though it was Tethered, Never Land is a special case, one which I plan to elaborate on in a later fic. I'm not going to explain it right now because it's a pretty big spoiler for the Acolytes of Chaos storyline.**

 **The tunnels connecting those caverns to Atlantis come from a supplemental guide book called Atlantis: Subterranean Tours, which describes events that occur after the movie (whether the DTV sequel retcons them isn't clear, but it doesn't matter since Atlantis: Milo's return isn't canon for this story). Also from that guide book is Whitmore Industries employees getting to visit Atlantis in secret along with celebrities of the time period (the book mentions H.G. Wells, Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt, and Edgar Rice Burroughs by name, the latter of whom was apparently popular enough that Atlanteans named a bed and breakfast after him).**

 **And thus, the S.A.C.K. is born. This little club for people who know about the Keyblade and other worlds is based on the Marvel comic series The Illuminati, which is about a group of superheroes forming their own secret society to share information on large-scale planetary threats like the Skrull (who will not be showing up since they haven't been introduced in the MCU yet and I'm not sure if Marvel has the film rights for them anyway). Only this time there are no superheroes, it's mainly made up of Earth-bound Disney characters, and it's significantly less morally ambiguous (from what I've read, the characters on the society in the Marvel comic did a lot of questionable things).**

 **So S.A.C.K. will be a major part of the overall story I've got planned for the Acolytes of Chaos saga, and we will be seeing more of it later as it grows over the years. And since Theodore Roosevelt also had a one-shot appearance in the Legend of Tarzan TV series that came out after the movie (I don't care that it's never appeared in any game since KH1 due to rights issues, as far as I'm concerned the Tarzan world is still canon in the KH Timeline), I leave you with the implication that Tarzan and Jane end up joining this little secret society, since Deep Jungle qualified as a Tethered World when I came up with the idea.**

 **Next chapter: The Tesseract doesn't destroy. It transports. So what really happened to the Red Skull when he picked it up aboard the Valkyrie? If you've read Regroup And Rebuild or The Xehanort War you know what's coming next chapter. ;)**


	4. Meeting of Minds

**Le KH Fangirl: spot on. We don't actually know if the Red Skull's really dead in the MCU, since, as Hawkeye said in The Avengers, "the cube is a doorway to the other end of space." If you watch the Red Skull's "death scene" in The First Avenger very closely, the part when his scream cuts out the camera quickly pans up to focus on the beam of light shooting up from the Tesseract, making it look not-coincidentally like the Bifrost from the Thor movies ;) Since that leaves the possibility open for him to be alive, I took it and ran with it.**

 **Be warned, if you haven't seen or aren't caught up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Red Skull's monologuing contains major spoilers for season 3.**

* * *

 **Episode 4: Meeting of Minds:**

 **The Valkyrie – March 4, 1945**

 **57 Years before Birth By Sleep**

"What have you done?" HYDRA leader Johan Schmidt, known to both his followers and foes alike as the nefarious Red Skull, roared as he climbed up from the floor of his personal aircraft, the Valkyrie, and saw the containment case for his most prized possession – The Tesseract – dislodged by the impact of his body when Captain America knocked him into the case, the cube itself lying between the dislodged case and the console on which it once stood.

"No…" he whispered as he plucked the cube from where it lay and turned to face that American fool who had thus far managed to foil his plans. _No more,_ he vowed to himself mentally. _I will not lose to that pathetic imbecile again._ But before he could unleash the cosmic cube's destructive power against his hated enemy, blue lightning began sparking from the cube into the space above him. The cube glowed brighter as a projection of the universe appeared over the Valkyrie's cabin roof. Stars and galaxies and nebulae were superimposed over cold, hard steel as the Tesseract grew brighter still.

As the cube continued to glow, a wave of excruciating pain flooded through the Red Skull's body. As blue energy began creeping up his arm, his self-control broke down and he screamed in agony as the energy coated his body before he shot up into the projection of the universe. But rather than pass through what he initially thought to be a hologram and smash his head against the roof of the Valkyrie, he kept flying through the stars, enveloped in a beam of blue light. The searing heat in his body increased the more he flew through space, until finally his eyes could no longer stay open and he passed out from the pain.

When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying on a bed of grass along a winding path clearly leading up a mountain. There were rivers and small cliffs nearby, along with some stone benches, metal lanterns, and an elaborate wood and metal structure that clearly indicated the presence of some form of sentient life. As he examined his surroundings, he questioned why he could still feel the pain he'd just endured if he was supposed to be dead before coming to the realization that the Tesseract was a means of transportation, rather than destruction.

The legends of the cube in Norse mythology only spoke of its great power, and in his arrogance, Schmidt had assumed that this power was destructive in nature. Since he was obviously still alive that was clearly not the case. _Meaning that all the men that have been "killed" with the weapons that Dr. Zola designed merely suffered the same fate as I have,_ the disfigured man thought to himself angrily. _But a more important question right now is where am I?_ Off in the distance was what appeared to be a castle of some kind, but he was evidently no longer on earth because from this distance he could tell that the fortress's design did not match that of any culture known to man.

He was not a fool to think that mankind was alone among the stars. HYDRA itself had been founded a millennium before him by men who knew that other life existed beyond Earth. The Kree. They had come to earth thousands of years ago seeking to turn mankind into super soldiers, much like the American military did with Captain America. But for whatever reason, whether due to fear of rebellion or their war ending, the Kree abandoned their tests subjects on earth, leaving them with incredible powers. These forgotten lab rats dubbed themselves Inhumans and went into hiding to avoid persecution from men.

But there was one Inhuman so powerful that she sought to conquer the world. She had gathered a circle of followers around itself, human and Inhuman alike. Her name was Jenova, and even her fellow Inhumans (that would not side with it) feared her. But the Inhumans who opposed her could not destroy her, even when combining all their powers together, so they banished her from earth through a one-way portal the Kree had left behind. HYDRA was founded by her human followers with the ultimate goal of freeing her from her prison.

Turning his attention back to his surroundings, Red Skull decided that if he was going to get answers about where he was, he would need to head towards the castle and see what kind of life resided on this planet. He was about to start down the mountain path when a voice, speaking in English, interrupted his thoughts.

"I was wondering when you'd wake up," the voice, clearly male from the sound of it, called out. Schmidt turned around in surprise to find himself facing a young, _human_ man, apparently in his early twenties, with light grey hair and blazing golden eyes. "You'd been unconscious for hours." Schmidt kept his face neutral as he spoke with this being. He knew he was on Earth but from what he knew of Norse mythology, he was not convinced that this was Asgard. _Besides,_ he thought, _this young man's appearance is totally ridiculous._ "Where did you come from?" the boy asked.

"Switzerland," Red Skull replied briskly. The young "man" looked confused at the answer.

"Never heard of it," he said. _Well that confirms it,_ the HYDRA leader thought to himself. _I am no longer on Earth._ But then the boy asked him a question. "How did you get here though? You just fell from the sky in a beam of light. I've never seen anything like it. It obviously wasn't a Dark Corridor and you don't look like a Keyblade Wielder." Reluctantly Johan Schmidt gave the boy a brief and highly edited version of the Tesseract and how he ended up on this world. With that out of the way, he asked the question he'd been waiting to ask since he'd woken up.

"Where am I?" the German scientist asked.

"The Land of Departure," the grey-haired man answered. "Home of the great and noble warriors of the Keyblade." The Red Skull raised an eyebrow at his companion's apparent sarcasm as he said the last line.

"What exactly is a Keyblade?" he asked curiously, the curious, analytical part of his mind deciding to make the most of his situation and learn everything he could about where he'd ended up. He was skeptical when the young man claimed that Keyblades were weapons of great magical power, only to quickly eat his words when he summoned the weapon to his hands in a flash of light and demonstrate its capabilities by casting a few spells. His companion went on to explain the history of the apparently mystical weapon, which the Nazi scientist found fascinating.

Apparently millennia ago, mankind lived on a single planet, and believed that light and all that was good in the universe came from an unseen land known as Kingdom Hearts. Everyone loved the light and each nation coveted it for themselves. Eventually, war broke out between multiple factions of Keyblade Wielders for control over the seemingly divine weapon upon which their man-made ones were modelled: the X – Blade. Eventually the war grew to such intensity that it tore the planet apart. But thanks to "glimmers of light surviving in the hearts of children" the fragments of the planet remained habitable for the survivors.

The Red Skull was impressed by the story. True, he doubted the accuracy of some of the more fantastical elements, but it did explain why there were humans all the way out in space. And it seemed to have actually happened on some level at least. In the course of his hunt for the Tesseract, he had found archeological evidence that suggested such a cataclysm had indeed occurred in the distant past. He was beginning to compile a theory in his head when the young man finally introduced himself.

"Sorry, I've been so rude not to introduce myself," the Keyblade Wielder said as he offered his hand. "My name is Xehanort."

"Johan Schmidt," Red Skull introduced himself as he shook Xehanort's hand. As the two walked down the mountain towards the castle, Xehanort revealed his fascination with darkness and what happened when it consumed the world. Even Schmidt could see that the boy's curiosity would quickly grow into an obsession. The Red Skull in turn let slip some of his views of the world. His belief that superior men deserved to rule over those who were inferior to them. He wasn't afraid of how Xehanort would react. He could tell that the sliver-haired man would keep the HYDRA Head's secret just as he hid his own obsession with darkness.

However, when Schmidt asked him how his compatriots felt about his views, Xehanort's whole demeanor changed. The German knew that the other man could recognize the Earthling's probing questions, and he adjusted his tone accordingly. Xehanort launched into a tirade about how his mentor and fellow pupil were blinded by arrogance and convinced of the superiority of light. _We have much alike then,_ Red Skull thought to himself as they approached the base of the mountain. _But one thing I have unfortunately learned is that if you try to take what you want by force, they will resist._

He voiced his opinion on the matter with Xehanort, and the Key bearer thanked him for the advice. But when the duo approached the base of the mountain, Xehanort summoned his Keyblade into his hands and blasted the off-worlder with a Blizzaga spell. As a thick coating of ice began to creep its way up the Red Skull's body, Xehanort smiled.

"I appreciate all of you advice, Schmidt," the young man said. "But right now I don't have need of your services at the moment, so I'm going to find some place to keep you on ice until have a use for you." Once the German lost consciousness from the cold, Xehanort opened up a Corridor of Darkness (something he'd experimented with making before), and carried Schmidt off to another world where he could be kept in storage until he was needed. Decades later, he would come to reside in a citadel known as the Castle That Never Was, only to be freed by agents of Maleficent a few weeks after Xehanort's demise.

* * *

 **And that's how Red Skull ended up being kept in stasis in the dungeon of the Castle That Never Was.**

 **So at this point in time, Xehanort is 23, and he's just starting out on his descent into Darkness, so he hasn't fully gone on to his Keyblade War recreation plan yet, but he's starting to formulate different ideas. That's why he froze Red Skull, to have for a rainy day when he finally jumped off the slippery slope and needed an ally. But as many of you know from The Xehanort War and Regroup And Rebuild, he decided not to unfreeze him.**

 **Xehanort War & Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoiler time: HYDRA was originally founded by followers of an ancient Inhuman so powerful all the others were afraid of it, and banished it through a portal to another planet on the other side of the galaxy. HYDRA's true goal was freeing that Inhuman. On the show, the Inhuman has no name, but I decided to make that Inhuman Jenova (Sephiroth's Eldritch Abomination mother from Final Fantasy 7) in The Xehanort War to tie everything together. **

**People have complained about the retcon of HYDRA's origins, but when you think about it, the fact that they were founded by humans who knew about the Inhumans, the Kree and that whole story actually makes sense. How else would the Red Skull know with certainty that the Tesseract was an alien artifact that was scientific in origin instead of just some mystical mumbo jumbo?**

 **The date of the final battle in Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe wikia. And since the Tesseract teleports people instead of destroying them, all of the people shot with Red Skull's tesseract-powered guns in that time period were simply teleported to another planet. And that is why there are humans on Montressor (from Treasure Planet).**

 **Next chapter: Rinoa Heartily (Leon's love interest in Final Fantasy 8 for those unaware) wakes up in an alleyway in Los Angeles a few hours after the Fall of Radiant Garden. Expect angst to follow.**


	5. Only Survivor

**Minor Xehanort War spoilers, but the residents of Radiant Garden collectively refer to the chaos of what happened when Xehanort unleashed the Heartless and Maleficent took over as The Fall.**

* * *

 **Episode 5: Only Survivor:**

 **Los Angeles – June 24, 2003**

 **9 Years before Kingdom Hearts 1**

"Not that It isn't good to see you," Melinda May, now Melinda Garner, said as she opened the door to her Los Angeles hotel room to find fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson standing in the hallway, "but what are you doing here Coulson? I requested time off while Andrew and I were on our honeymoon." Dr. Andrew Garner was a psychologist who S.H.I.E.L.D. paid as a consultant to evaluate gifted individuals. Individuals with superpowers. He and Melinda had recently gotten married, and she had requested leave from S.H.I.E.L.D. for a few weeks so they could enjoy their honeymoon. Agent Coulson's arrival meant that their honeymoon was about to be cut short.

"I know," Coulson replied apologetically. "And I'm sorry, but we have an 0-8-4 right here in L.A. Only a few blocks from here to be exact." Melinda sighed. And here she thought she and Andrew might actually get to enjoy their honeymoon. After going back inside to inform him of what was going on, promise to make it up to him, and change into something more appropriate (just because she was on her honeymoon didn't mean she hadn't packed a pant suit in anticipation of something like this), she and Coulson walked down the hallway towards the elevator. They needed to figure out what this 0-8-4 was before anyone else got their hands on it.

The 0-8-4 in question was sitting in a dark alleyway, huddled against the wall. Her knees tucked into her chest as her body shook from the fear, pain, sorrow she'd just endured. Radiant Garden, her home, in chaos. Yellow-eyed, shadow monsters killing people in the streets left and right. Her parents crumpling to the ground like deflated balloons as those… _things…_ tore out their hearts. The Royal Guard helpless to protect the people. Green fire burning in the streets as those demons poured over the city walls and out of the castle gates. She remembered grabbing a Blaster Edge off a dead soldier's body to defend herself, only to fall through a black portal before she got the chance to do anything. She woke up here in this alley, helpless and alone.

Rinoa Heartily broke down in tears as she wept for all that she had lost. Her father had been a high ranking officer in Radiant Garden's royal guard, and her mother, a singer and pianist. Her boyfriend Squall always wanted to join the Royal Guard once he turned 18. Her dog Angelo would follow her around endlessly. They were all gone now. She had no idea what had happened back in Radiant Garden, but if the way things were going before was any indication, everyone else was most likely dead.

She wanted to hit something. Either one of those monsters or the green-skinned woman she'd seen commanding them. That woman… who had ordered the beasts to leave the younger kids alone yet had no qualms about slaughtering their parents like cattle. Rinoa took a deep breath to calm herself. She was alive, even if she had no idea where she was. But she would find out, and she would find a way back home to find out what had happened. Despite her sinking feeling that everyone she knew and cared for was dead, she would not rest until she found out for certain.

She was about to get to her feet when two people walked into the alleyway. A man with a balding head, and a woman with short brown hair. Both of them wore suits, and she knew from seeing her dad in action that their body language was signaling that they didn't want to fight, but were prepared to do so if they had to. The man's eyes drifted down towards the Blaster Edge in her hand. The woman on the other hand was looking right at her. Analyzing her, assessing the situation.

* * *

Agent Coulson was about to ask the girl where she got that circular device. There had been an energy surge that alerted them to the presence of an 0-8-4 in the Los Angeles area, and the old-school energy detector in his watch indicated that the object in her hand was what they were looking for. But before he could open his mouth Agent May (even though she and Andrew were married now S.H.I.E.L.D. still referred to her by her maiden name to avoid confusion) took the lead.

"What's wrong," she asked. As the words left May's mouth, the girl's head turned up towards them, exposing the most lines of tears streaming down her face. Instantly Coulson nodded to Melinda, giving her his silent understanding.

"They're dead," the girl sobbed.

"Who's dead?" May asked calmly, dropping down to the girl's eye level. As she did so, Coulson double-checked the readings on his watch and realized that the readings were coming from both the circular metal object and the girl herself. She was an 0-8-4. When the words left Melinda's mouth the girl's crying intensified.

"Everyone," the girl chocked out. "My parents, my boyfriend, my neighbors, my friends, they're all gone. Those _things_ killed them." May quickly gave the girl a comforting hug, shooting a glance at Coulson as theories began circulating in the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's minds. If the girl's parents had been killed by whatever it was she was talking about, then the mysterious object she was holding was most likely a weapon of some kind, but the girl had most likely grabbed it in order to defend herself against whatever it was that killed her family.

Right now, Melinda was helping the mysterious teenager calm down. As much as they sympathized with the loss she'd suffered, they needed to get her somewhere safe. S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't the only agency capable of detecting the energy she and that thing in her hands were given off. Gemini's so-called Worldwide Evil Empire, Professor Dementor, and a whole host of other supervillains and shadowy organizations.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept them in check for much of its existence, but recent budget cuts had limited their ability to deal with those kinds of threats. But unfortunately some idiot decided to divert a significant chunk of their U.N. funding towards copycat organizations like Global Justice Network and the Organization Without a Cool Acronym. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on relatively good terms with both organizations, but the jurisdictional red tape allowed more supervillain threats to go unchecked. Although Fury had decided to take inspiration from the superhero group Team Go and was thinking about creating S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own superhero team.

Melinda calmly told the girl that they knew someplace where she would be safe before introducing herself. Wiping her eyes, the fifteen year old girl introduced herself as Rinoa Heartily. _Kind of sounds like Agent Hartley,_ Coulson mused to himself as they escorted Rinoa back to May's hotel room. Once they had a chance for Rinoa to explain her story, they would get her an evac to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. facility.

A few hours later, Andrew Garner quietly closed the door to the bedroom in the hotel suite. After telling the psychologist and two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents of what would decades later be known as The Fall, the fifteen year-old girl had finally hit the wall from the fatigue of the last twenty-four hours. With the interstellar refugee asleep in the bedroom, the three adults turned to discuss everything Rinoa had told them.

"She's telling the truth," Andrew said first. "She wouldn't be that traumatized and exhausted if she was lying about where she came from."

"But then how come we've never heard of this "Radiant Garden?"" Melinda asked as she sat next to her husband on the couch.

"There could be any number of reasons," Coulson offered. "It could be in a parallel dimension, or it might not even exist yet. With the kind of crazy tech mad scientists these days neither option is implausible. What I'm more concerned about is what we tell the Director. After everything Rinoa just went through, we can't just treat her like another gifted. And that weapon, Blaster Edge, I think she called it. She's not going to hand it over to S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists to pick apart. Until and unless she finds a way back to wherever she came from that tech is all she has left of her home."

"She can stay with us," Agent May said after sharing a meaningful look at Andrew. "We were planning on starting a family eventually. Even if we're not ready for kids of our own, we'd be happy to take her in. We just need to come up with a cover story for her and forge the necessary documents."

"We're still going to have to tell a select few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents," Phil replied. "Fury and Hill will see through any cover story we cook up, so we at least need to keep them in the loop." Melinda and Andrew reluctantly agreed before the older man went to call Maria Hill, the agency's second-in-command. As it turned out, Maria Hill was already on her way to L.A. for a meeting at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s California base, and would meet with them in a few hours to explain everything.

* * *

"Whatever's going on Coulson, you owe me an explanation for making me late for my meeting over an 0-8-4," the Deputy Director said with mock irritation before she hung up the phone. _Well that was unexpected,_ she thought to herself. _Looks like Coulson and May got to the Contact Point before I could._ She looked around the plush cabin of the private jet she was flying aboard instead of the usual S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet. That mode of transportation would attract too much attention for where she was really going.

"So what happened?" the dark skinned man sitting across from her inquired as she activated the self-destruct mechanism on her custom-made burner phone. Being part of two different secret organizations had its perks.

"Coulson and May arrived at the point of contact first," she answered. "Judging by their tone, they want to keep whatever or whoever they found a secret. Otherwise they wouldn't have requested a private meeting with me, and they would have already taken their findings to our California base and filed the incident report already."

"Any chance of it being one of them?" the man asked. Behind his dark sunglasses, Commander Hill knew he looked eager to meet the legendary beings who had inspired the creation of their secret society. She sighed.

"I'd like to think so, Agent Bubbles," Maria replied. "But given how long it's been since our last contact, the odds of it being a Keyblade Wielder are depressingly low. We don't have enough information to pinpoint what time periods are Tethered and at what point things are taking place in the modern day." Cobra Bubbles nodded in understanding before turning his attention to the clouds passing by outside the windows.

The Society for Advanced Cultural Knowledge had come a long way in the last nine decades, and their reach had expanded across the globe. They had members in London, Hong Kong, Manhattan, Kokaua Town, Lai Xi, Shibuya, the North Pole, even within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. With the financial backing of Whitmore Industries, the advanced technology of Atlantis, and the secrecy that S.H.I.E.L.D. used to keep the more fantastical elements of the world away from the public eye, members of S.A.C.K. had spent the last eighty nine years hunting down every scrap of legend and document relating to the Keyblade War or past visits to a tethered era by Key bearers.

Their numbers had grown since then, and it looked like they were about to be inducting two more members within the next twenty-four hours. Reports by the founders about the stories Kairi and Riku had told about the conflict with Xehanort included references to an event known to those affected by it as The Fall, where Xehanort's machinations resulted in the destruction of a world called Radiant Garden, killing hundreds and scattering the survivors across the universe. When the S.A.C.K. was founded, they immediately realized the possibility that survivors of Radiant Garden's destruction might pop up on different Tethered eras.

Coulson and May weren't requesting reinforcements or anything of the like when they contacted her. They would do that whether the contact was Keyblade Wielder or agent of Xehanort. The fact that they were keeping it quiet suggested it was most likely a Fall survivor. Possibly a child, given the level of secrecy they were clearly attempting to go for. It was unlikely any S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, even ones as kind-hearted as Phil and Melinda, would go to such lengths for an adult.

Upon coming to that realization, Maria Hill immediately called up S.A.C.K.'s San Diego facility and request that Agent Fair meet her on the tarmac. If they were indeed dealing with a refugee from Radiant Garden's Fall, it would help to have someone who knew a survivor of the Garden on hand to help them cope with the loss. Right now though, Maria Hill pulled out her custom Whitmore Industries phone and logged into the S.A.C.K. mainframe to report this incident to the other members. They would be bringing two more recruits into the fold.

* * *

 **Another AOS spoiler to explain: 084 is SHIELD code for any object (or person) of unknown origin. For example Coulson finding Thor's hammer in the first Thor movie was classified as an 084.**

 **Rinoa Heartily is Leon's girlfriend in Final Fantasy 8. The elements of her backstory here like her parent's jobs, the dog, the Blast Edge, etc. are all based on her FF8 backstory, only tweaked to fit the Kingdom Hearts universe.**

 **Because of the whole Tethered worlds thing, keeping up with the events of the conflict with Xehanort for the agents of S.A.C.K. is like River Song keeping track of where she was in the Doctor's timeline on Doctor Who.**

 **Team Go, Worldwide Evil Empire, Professor Dementor, and Global Justice are from Kim Possible. The Organization without a Cool Acronym is from Phineas and Ferb, those two shows, American Dragon: Jake Long, and Lilo & Stitch: The Series are part of the canon of The Xehanort War and the Acolytes of Chaos Saga, albeit with Broad Strokes applied and some elements trimmed down for the non-Lilo & Stitch shows.**

 **Speaking of which, I told you that the S.A.C.K. would come into play later on, and we will be seeing more of them and slowly revealing who else is a part of this little secret club over the course of this fic and in the next Acolytes of Chaos story after this one. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. viewers will recognize what the name dropping of Lai Xi means, and KH fans will have the same reaction for Shibuya, and the North Pole reference requires no explanation. If you're confused as to how, remember what other Square Enix property is included in the KH series. ;)**

 **Next chapter: Dr. Director of Global Justice Network meets with a familiar, eye-patch wearing colleague.**


	6. Deactivation

**Short chapter this time, ladies and gentlemen, and this is another one where the threads of the Xehanort War universe are weaved together more.**

* * *

 **Episode 6: Deactivation:**

 **Global Justice Headquarters – January 7, 2007**

 **5 Years before Kingdom Hearts 1**

Dr. Betty Director sighed as she looked around at the now abandoned base for Global Justice Network. After a disastrous international incident involving high ranking members of GJN, the United Nations made the decision to decommission the crime fighting group. Its agents could either apply for jobs at different security agencies or find work elsewhere. Most of them were applying for jobs at different security agencies. A few had already gotten picked up by the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.

But the higher ups of Global Justice had spent the past few days clearing out their main headquarters and preparing the self-destruct sequence. She was finishing up downloading the remaining secure files from the computer mainframe when she heard footsteps behind her. She didn't even have to turn around to know who was standing behind her.

"I don't remember giving you access," she said.

"You really think I'd need it?" Nick Fury retorted with a smirk. "It's good to see you again, Doctor. Sorry about the shut down."

"Oh come on, Nick" she replied with a chuckle. "We both know you hated GJ's existence because the UN slashed your budget in order to fund us. Regardless of your condolences you're still happy you have your budget back."

"I am," Fury answered honestly. "Doesn't mean I'm happy that I put good so many agents out of a job. I've still got a few positions open if you want it." Dr. Director smiled. She had known Nick Fury long before Global Justice had been formed, and one of the things she respected about him was how he refused to sugar coat anything. The fact that he was offering her and her out of work agents jobs was a reminder that beneath his gruff, tell-it-like-it-is exterior, he did have a heart deep down.

"I might just take you up on that offer," she said with a smile. "I assume you've already started actively recruiting other ex-GJ operatives and you decided to approach me about it personally?"

"You know me too well," the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. replied. "How about we talk about it over coffee once you're done here?"

"Alright then," Dr. Director answered before she finished the download and initiated the base's self-destruct sequence. While they walked out of the soon-to-be-buried base, she had another question for her old colleague.

"I assume given her track record you're going to recruit Kim Possible once she graduates from high school?" she asked curiously. The teen hero had proven to be a resourceful ally, and once she graduate high school this year, every intelligence agency on the planet would be fighting each other for the chance to have her working for them. To her surprise however, Fury's answer was no.

"Her skills are certainly impressive," he explained. "But she does more good for the world on her own, without being hindered by bureaucracy and red tape. She can't help people if she's tied to one specific group, being told where, when, or even if she can help people. So no, I'm not interested in recruiting her as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent. I'll still follow your example and hire her as a part-time consultant, but Kim Possible works best when she's not tied down to any particular agency. That being said, I am considering her for a little initiative I'm putting together."

"Ah yes," the former head of Global Justice nodded. "Your little "Avengers" idea. But how is that any different from being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?" As always, when someone asked Nick Fury a question, he always had an answer that he could back up with a logical explanation.

"Because the Avengers Initiative will end up being separate from S.H.I.E.L.D.," he explained. "It's about putting together a team of heroes to fight the battles that we can't. But once the team comes together, they'll realize, as we already know, that being part of S.H.I.E.L.D. will restrict their ability to help people. So they'll naturally keep themselves a separate entity from S.H.I.E.L.D., even if they accept support from us when they need it."

Dr. Director nodded as she digested the explanation. As always, Nick Fury thought everything out twelve moves in advance. That was why he had achieved the position of Director so young, and why S.H.I.E.L.D. managed to stay operational even when their sources of income were crippled. As they sat in a small little coffee bar just outside Middleton, she shuddered to think what kind of calamity would necessitate the activation of the Avengers Initiative. There could be any number of things really. But for now, she took a deep breath to focus herself as she and Fury had an impromptu job interview right there in the middle of the coffee shop.

* * *

 **So yeah, this chapter and the next one are focused tying in the Kim Possible mythos with the MCU timeline. And expect to see more surprising character connections like this one and the ones mentioned last chapter in the chapters to come. There will be plenty of surprises as to who's part of the S.A.C.K.**

 **And I know the summary says AU after Winter Soldier, but that's mainly for the movie side of things and only really applies to the major shake-up changes. There's going to be smaller changes in earlier movies like Kim Possible being a candidate for the Avengers Initiative, etc. And the TV side of things is pretty much full blown AU from the start. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is AU for a huge chunk of Season 1. Agent Carter is AU after Season 1. Really only Daredevil & Jessica Jones are still canon as is for this fic as far as the shows are concerned. **

**Next chapter, Kim Possible meets with a few agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after the alien invasion that accompanied her High School graduation.**


	7. Graduation

**Episode 7: Graduation:**

 **Middleton High School Conference Room – May 30, 2007**

 **5 Years before Kingdom Hearts 1**

Kim Possible sighed angrily as she glared across the table at the man sitting across the table from her. Her high school graduation had been an exhausting night, between the abduction by the alien warrior Warmonga and her partner Warhok, and the battle against the duo above Middleton. Drakken and Shego had even helped to save the world. But then this guy from some government agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. showed up. And well…

"So let me get this straight," she began, her tone impatient and annoyed. "I just helped save the world from an alien invasion, and you're telling me that the government is going to cover the whole thing up and write off the walkers as the tech of a mad scientist?" She, Ron, Drakken, and Shego were all going to be given medals by the U.N. for their heroics, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was paying to rebuild her family's house. But the idea of just covering everything up just infuriated her.

"That's the plan," the agent, Coulson she thought his name was, replied. "I understand the frustration at not having your efforts be recognized, but the public isn't quite ready for the revelation that we're not alone in the universe. Sure people may joke about it or dress up as aliens but there's a difference between speculating and accepting. Rest assured though, your actions last night will not go unnoticed."

"And the next time this happens?" she asked, frustrated. She understood the man's reasoning, but she was still upset about the fact that her accomplishments were being swept under the rug. Sure, she didn't really need the recognition and media attention, but there was a difference between one of her adventures happening without the media reporting on it and a deliberate cover up of her heroics.

"The next time we have a global attack like this," Agent Coulson answered calmly. "The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a plan in place."

"Which I'm sure will backfire, necessitating me saving the day just like this time," Kim retorted.

"Actually," Coulson said, "Director Fury wants you to be a part of his plan. He's calling it the Avengers Initiative. The goal is to basically create a superhero team for the express purpose of handling large scale threats. When putting the idea together, he flagged you and Mr. Stoppable as potential candidates." This actually made Kim pause. Sure there were groups like Team Go all over the world, but they stuck mainly to small scale local supervillains. She still intended to continue doing her missions as she always did while she was in college, but the idea of a team that would handle the major stuff on a global scale. There was just one problem though.

"I don't want to be tied down to a specific agency," she commented. "I don't want to be limited in where, when, and how I can help people." To her surprise, Agent Coulson agreed with her assessment.

"Which is why Fury wants to pay you as a part time consultant," the agent went on. "That way we can always call you when your assistance is required, you get extra cash to put food on the table, and stay independent from S.H.I.E.L.D. Everybody wins." Kim thought it over for a moment before she spoke.

"I want to talk it over with Ron first," she said. "We work best as a team, so you'll either get both of us or neither." Agent Coulson nodded his approval.

"Fair enough," he commented. "We're pretty much done here but when you make your decision, give us a call." He got up from the conference table and handed her a business card. On it was the full name of the agency, Coulson's name, and a phone number. Coulson said goodbye before heading out the door, while Kim pulled out her phone to call her boyfriend and find out where he was. Since he wasn't picking up, she assumed he was either with his parents or arguing with another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She walked out into the hallway and was about to head out to look for him when Drakken and Shego emerged from another conference room on the other side of the hall.

"I assume based on the fact that neither of you are in handcuffs that you're both being pardoned for helping save the world?" she asked with a wry smile. While Drakken and Shego were her arch enemies, she didn't really hold any grudges against them over their schemes. Besides, if it weren't for Drakken's plant scheme, Warmonga and her husband would still be ruling the world, and Kim herself would likely be dead.

"Pretty much," Shego replied. "The U.N.'s going to give us all medals for our "valliant heroism". And since Dr. D and I are going to need a career change after this, S.H.I.E.L.D. offered us jobs." While she retained her sarcastic wit, right now Shego sounded more like she did when she had been hit with the Attitudinator, more willing to show her softer side. Kim offered her congratulations before inquiring about the details, the two women slipping back into the friendly rapport they'd developed during the aforementioned incident. The ceremony was going to be held in a few days, and until then the four of them and their families were given an all-expenses paid trip to New York before and afterwards.

After the ceremony, Drakken and Shego would head of to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top-secret headquarters for training. Drakken would be going into the science division, while Shego would specialize in field work, working alongside two agents named Barton and Romanov, who Agent May, who'd debriefed them, claimed were the best in the agency. Kim wished the two now-reformed supervillains luck before heading off through the hallways to look for Ron. Now that they had graduated from high school, it was time to go out and celebrate.

* * *

 **This chapter was born out of deciding to incorporate the Marvel Cinematic Universe into this story but needing to come up with an explanation for why the public didn't already know about alien invasions because of the Kim Possible series finale, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. cover-up was the solution that made the most sense.**

 **So when the Avengers rolls around, you can bet that Kim, Ron, and even Shego are going to be right there in the thick of the action in New York.**

 **Next chapter, Agent Coulson is sent to Hawaii to meet with a certain family. You can all guess what'll happen next. ;)**


	8. Aloha e Komo Mai

**Episode 8: Aloha e Komo Mai:**

 **Kokaua Town, Hawaii – September 9, 2007**

 **5 Years before Kingdom Hearts 1**

The little house up in the hills of Kauai had a rustic, quaint look about it. Apart from the large sphere sitting in the center of the roof, one would be forgiven for thinking that it was an ordinary family home on the outskirts of Kokaua town. But this was no ordinary home. And its occupants were no ordinary family. The man's face was set in a determined line as he walked up the stairs to the front porch. As a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, it was his job to investigate unexplained events. Bizarre creatures being sighted that didn't match any known animal certainly qualified.

He reached the top steps and knocked on the front door. He had a feeling this wouldn't be pleasant. A few minutes later, the door opened, revealing a young woman in her mid-twenties with black hair standing there dressed in a blue tank top and cargo pants. Agent Coulson was about to give the standard "authoritative S.H.I.E.L.D. agent speech" he'd given millions of times before when the woman spoke first.

"Phil, how are you?" Nani Pelekai greeted warmly. "Come on in. It's great to see you again."

"I wish it was under better circumstances though," he replied with a smile as he walked inside. As he followed Nani into the kitchen, she offered him a glass of lemonade, which he politely declined. Nani called out for her sister to come downstairs as the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent took a seat at the table. Lilo enjoyed the kind of supernatural and bizarre things that S.H.I.E.L.D. dealt with, and considered becoming a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent one of her top career choices, right below Intergalactic adventurer and Keyblade Wielder.

It had been four years since he'd been recruited into the S.A.C.K., and he enjoyed spending time with all the people who were involved in it. It was interesting seeing how many people were connected to Keyblade Wielders in some way, shape, or form. While the revelation of other worlds had rocked his world at first, he'd quickly accepted it. Rinoa had bonded with a member of S.A.C.K. who had befriended one of the survivors of her world's destruciton, but she had come to see Dr. Garner and Agent May as her adoptive parents, and over the years, they'd come to see her as their daughter.

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand as Lilo came tearing into the room. Cobra Bubbles had introduced him to the family after his induction into S.A.C.K., and he'd quickly become part of the bizarre and large extended family. Jumba and Pleakley, having heard Nani telling Lilo of his arrival, came out into the living room as well. Stitch and Angel came in from the backyard, and within minutes, the immediate members of the expanded Pelekai Ohana were all gathered in the living room.

"I know I'm already part of the family," Coulson began before the chatting could really get underway. "But I'm here in Hawaii on business this time. S.H.I.E.L.D. business." Everyone immediately frozen. None of them bore any ill will towards the international security agency, but given how S.H.I.E.L.D. reacted to dangerous technology, they were all wary of how S.H.I.E.L.D. would react to the six hundred twenty-seven aliens living in the Hawaiian Islands. That was why the S.A.C.K. had been actively working since the non-humans had arrived on Earth to keep them off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar, and off the radar of any nefarious groups that would use Dr. Jookiba's genetic creations for their own insidious ends.

"The Society's been working to keep word of the Experiments from spreading," he went on. "But with new social networking sites like Facebook popping up, it's going to get a lot harder. We're working on setting up algorithms to delete any photos of them that get uploaded, but until we do there's a risk that going through and deleting them all manually will cause us to miss a few that will put you all on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar. I promised Fury I'd investigate all the alien sightings then report back to him with my assessment of the situation."

Everyone immediately went into a panicked frenzy as that bomb dropped. Nani was freaked out about what S.H.I.E.L.D. would do. Lilo was terrified about Stitch and the other experiments being taken away. Jumba and Pleakley were anxious about the prospect of being thrown in prison. After a futile attempt to get everyone to stop shouting, Agent Coulson whistled as loudly as he could to get everyone's attention.

"Everyone calm down," he said authoritatively. "I have a plan that will keep S.H.I.E.L.D. agents out of Hawaii and the experiments off the radar. I've already composed a report explaining everything to the director and outlining my solution. S.H.I.E.L.D. will leave you all alone. In exchange, if any of the experiments get on a plane or anything like that, then you call me, Agent Bubbles, or Commander Hill to let us know. This way, nobody gets taken away, nobody goes to prison."

This calmed everyone down a bit. They were still shaken a bit, but they'd stopped panicking. Nani looked over the document while Phil outlined all the loopholes and fine print to make sure everyone understood the details of the agreement. Once that was taken care of, Lilo, Stitch, and Angel went out to explain the situation to the other six hundred-twenty-three experiments living on the island. When they were gone, Jumba discussed the possibility of providing technology to S.H.I.E.L.D. as another part of the deal.

"I have so many things to invent and not enough space to put them," the Queltiquanian scientist had argued. "Selling more combat-ready ones to S.H.I.E.L.D. will help clear out clutter and free up space for more mundane technology." Coulson had agreed on that point, and pointed out that Jumba could apply for patents for his inventions, and being able to sell his more casual gadgets would help raise Earth's technology level enough that when the Galactic Federation made contact with Earth to offer humanity membership, they wouldn't be as low-tech as the other planets out there in the galaxy.

Coulson agreed, and Pleakley promised to spread the news of the deal through the local gossip vine. While S.H.I.E.L.D. had done its best to cover up the Lorwardian invasion a few months ago, the alien walkers on Kauai had been met with fierce resistance from the experiments living there. Once the people of Kokaua town learned about the existence of aliens on their island, they'd been surprisingly accepting of it. While people moving onto the islands were wary of the extraterrestrials, the people who'd lived there for years knew that the experiments wouldn't be allowed to run loose if they were a threat.

Since then, the existence of aliens in Kokaua town became a local secret. Everyone in town knew about it, and the experiments were passed off to tourists as advanced audio animatronics, and things like Slushy's ice breath or Dupe's cloning ability handwaved as magic tricks and optical illusions. Coulson smiled as he accepted the Pelekai's offer for him to stay for dinner. He wasn't leaving the island until tomorrow anyway. Once everyone had calmed down from the initial shock of his announcement, life went on as normal. If only they knew that in a few short years, their secrecy would vanish when a hole opened in the skies above New York.

* * *

 **Where last chapter was about explaining why the Lorwardian invasion in the Kim Possible series finale wasn't already public knowledge in the time of the MCU, this chapter is about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interactions and attitude towards the Pelekai family and it's non-human members. And yes, that last sentence does mean what you think it means.**

 **Next chapter: Rinoa helps her adopted family deal with the trauma of the Bahrain incident. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans know what I'm talking about.**


	9. After Bahrain

**Lots of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spoilers this chapter. You have been warned.**

* * *

 **Episode 9: After Bahrain:**

 **Garner Household – April 24** **th** **, 2008**

 **4 Years before Kingdom Hearts 1**

Melinda Garner sighed as she looked down at the transfer papers sitting on the kitchen counter in front of her. After the incident in Bahrain, she'd resigned from field work, requesting a desk job at Maria Hill's S.H.I.E.L.D. Base in New York City. After what she'd been forced to do to that little girl, she didn't think she'd be able to survive being forced to make the same sadistic choice again. But Andrew and Rinoa were helping her deal with the trauma. Despite her pain, Melinda couldn't help but smile as she thought of the Radiant Garden survivor. When she and Andrew had offered to take the girl in half a decade ago, neither of them imagined the impact that she would have on their lives, and they on hers.

Even though she was only a teenager, Rinoa admitted to Andrew one night that she viewed him and Melinda as her surrogate parents. They may not have been her biological family, but they were there for her through thick and thin. Every time Riona woke up screaming in the middle of the night from flashbacks to the destruction of her home, the couple was there in a heartbeat to comfort her and reassure her that she was alright. Although her experiences in Bahrain had put her off having children of her own, Melinda couldn't help but smile every time Rinoa called her "mom." And sometime in the last five years, she and Andrew had started thinking of her as their daughter.

They'd become a family over the years, and between Rinoa and Andrew, she would eventually heal from the trauma of what she'd done in Bahrain. Not for a few years at least, but eventually she would be back to normal. Behind her, Melinda heard the front door unlock. She stiffened and whirled around to face whoever had walked into her house, only to relax when she saw her daughter come walk inside carrying a backpack over her shoulder. Maria Hill and other members of the S.A.C.K. had helped forge the necessary documentation to put Rinoa through high school, but after graduation, she decided that she wanted to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, just like her adoptive mother.

Having heard over the phone what her mom had been through in Bahrain, Rinoa rushed forward and gave Melinda a hug. The older S.H.I.E.L.D agent had been there when she was reeling from the chaos and death when Radiant Garden fell. Now was the time to return the favor. While Melinda had retreated inward after Bahrain, talking about Rinoa's most recent missions helped to bring her out of her shell a little bit. A few hours later, there was a whoosh of air outside followed by a knock at the front door. While Rinoa headed over to the door, Melinda already knew who it was.

"I'm sorry about what happened in Bahrain," the woman said as she came into the kitchen. "As soon as Katya was rejected, I should have placed guards around Eva. I should have known."

"You don't have to apologize, Jiaying," Agent May replied, placing a hand on the Inhuman leader's shoulder. "You did everything you could. You had no way of knowing how far Eva was willing to go in order to ensure her daughter went through the mist. If you hadn't warned us, I don't think I'd have been able to stop her and Katya in time."

Jiaying had been a member of the S.A.C.K. since only a few years short of the beginning. After Hydra scientist Werner Reinhart vivisected her following his release from prison in 1989, she'd become an intense advocate of Inhuman isolationism. The exception to her changed attitude was her continued friendship with the other members of the Society, mainly out of gratitude for the fact that when her daughter had been taken by a remnant of Hydra, Society agents tracked the agents down and recovered her baby in less than a day. Despite her anger at what Whitehall had done to her, she couldn't extend her hatred towards humanity as a whole when she had friends who were willing to move heaven and earth to help her in her time of need.

But the continued existence of Hydra was another problem. Whitehall's actions, Jiaying's capture by alleged S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and Daisy Johnson's abduction were proof that Hydra was more than scattered terrorists. The supposedly dead organization was alive and thriving. The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who knew about the incident really shouldn't have been surprised though. After all "cut off one head, two more shall take its place" was practically Hydra's catchphrase. But every attempt at putting Hydra's actions on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar had been thwarted, leading the members of the Society who were also agents to the conclusion that Hydra had spies within S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ranks.

Knowing that they couldn't expose Hydra without exposing themselves, Maria Hill and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were part of the S.A.C.K. began preparing several contingency plans in the event of a Hydra attack of any scale, ranging from the discovery of a mole to the majority of S.H.I.E.L.D. being compromised. If Melinda Garner was being honest with herself, the reach of the Society had taken some getting used to, but looking back, she wouldn't really change a thing. Sure, it took a while to truly accept the whole Keyblade War explanation, but aside from being forced to shoot a little girl to save everyone else, she wouldn't change a thing.

After Jiaying did what she could to console Melinda over being forced to kill Katya Belyakov in Bahrain, the conversation turned towards the backlash Katya and her mother had caused back in Lai Xi. Jiaying finally had the opportunity to vent over all the criticism the Elders were directing her way, but to be honest she was glad to not have to do so much anymore. When Daisy was born, she knew that she wanted to age normally, and from that point refused to allow any of the elders to sacrifice themselves to her energy draining powers to keep her young. She would not outlive her daughter.

After her vivisection at the hands of Dr. Reinhart, she realized that she couldn't be trusted to remain impartial when dealing with groups like S.H.I.E.L.D. where traitors clearly lurked within their ranks, so she had stepped down from her leadership position in Lai Xi, opting instead to continue as an advisor. She would still train the next generation of Inhumans, she'd reassured the elders, and all of her knowledge would be written down so that it wouldn't be lost, but the next generation needed to find its own path without her leadership.

And so she and Cal retired to Milwaukee to raise Daisy out in the world. Her daughter had gone through the mist a few years ago, and was considering joining S.H.I.E.L.D. Jiaying was wary of the fact that there were Hydra agents operating within the ranks of its nobler counterpart, but Daisy had told her mother that she wanted to show her fellow Inhumans that they could make a difference in the world, and Jiaying had relented. Cal, being his adorable self, requested that she text them after each mission so that they knew she was alright. She wasn't going to join for a few years, though. She wanted to get a degree in computer programming first, since once of her lifelong dreams was to be a hacker and a super-spy.

Rinoa joined in the conversation after unpacking her bag, and the three women talked for the rest of the afternoon about S.H.I.E.L.D., Inhumans, and Hydra. When the sun finally started setting, Jiaying had to get back to Milwaukee. Daisy was still in college, so Cal was planning a date night for them tonight. Once Jiaying had departed via Gordon's teleportation, Melinda insisted on cooking dinner while she sent Rinoa upstairs to shower. As she pulled pots and pans out of the cabinet, Agent May couldn't help but let a small smile slip onto her face. The trauma of what she'd done lingered, but she had friends and family who were willing to help her through the pain every step of the way.

* * *

 **So yeah, I think this pretty fairly establishes just how AU the Agents of S.H. .D. side of things, since in this universe Skye's mom never turned to the dark side, and she grew up in Milwaukee like her parents planned, and Andrew and Agent May never got divorced like they do in canon. And the Hydra bits will start to give you an idea of how things are going to go post-Winter Soldier. While the majority of the chapters of Ripple Effects are One-shots, for the Hydra infiltration I've got a 10-part arc planned for that. As for how Daisy "Skye" Johnson already being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent will affect the course of AOS season 1, wait and see. That will be referenced in the aforementioned arc. ;)**

 **The base from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pilot being in NYC, I picked that because in the MCU Phase 1 tie-in comic Fury's Big Week, the New York base is established as the main non-Triskellion HQ for S.H.I.E.L.D.**

 **Next chapter: Loki didn't end up with Thanos immediately after the end of Thor. Instead, he wound up in a ruined citadel known as Hollow Bastion and met some familiar (to us at least) faces.**


	10. Letting Go

**If you're a fan of Loki, then prepare the tissues. The beginning of this chapter recreates the ending of the first Thor movie and shows what happens afterwards. Title comes from the movie soundtrack that plays when Loki lets go of the spear.**

* * *

 **Episode 10: Letting Go:**

 **Asgard – June 3, 2011**

 **1 Year before Kingdom Hearts 1**

Loki, prince of Asgard, stared in shock as he watched Thor hammer away at the Bifrost. A look of horror dawned on his face as he realized what his brother intended to do. Grabbing Gungnir, the king's badge of office, he raced forward to strike his brother down before he could destroy the ancient bridge which allowed Asgard and its people to traverse the nine realms. He leaped into the air and was about to plunge the ancient spear into his older brother's back when Thor brought his hammer down on the bridge one last time, and the Bifrost exploded in an inferno of blue fire.

The two princes were thrown into the air as the force of the explosion sent the Bifrost's control station crumbling down into the abyss beyond. Loki and Thor fell downwards towards the stars beyond, only for them to be caught by the familiar strong grip of their father. Odin held Thor's ankle, and he and Loki each held one end of the king's spear Gungnir as they dangled off the edge of the rainbow bridge. Thor smiled at his brother, but Loki only looked pleadingly up at Odin.

"I could have done it, father," the prince cried out, tears flowing down his face as he begged his father to understand his intentions. He'd only wanted to prove himself worthy of being an Asgardian. "I could have done it," he went on, a pleading look on his face. "For you. For all of us." Despite his anger and pain at being kept in the dark about his Frost Giant heritage, all he wanted was for his father to acknowledge him. To prove himself a worthy prince of Asgard.

"No Loki," Odin replied flatly. Anger and pain raged in Loki's heart as his fingers began to slip from the shaft of Gungnir. Amid Thor's protests and pleas not to, Loki let go of Odin's spear and fell down into the abyss. As he fell, a pool of darkness appeared in space ahead of him. When he fell through the portal, he finally passed out from the stress and pain of the last day.

He finally regained consciousness a few hours later and found himself lying on the floor of the stone floor of a cavernous hall in a castle of some sort. The mighty fortress had clearly suffered extensive damage in the last decade, but the cause of that damage was unknown to him. As he laid there on the floor of the room, everything he'd been through in the last few days finally caught up with him, and he spent the next several minutes crying his eyes out until he finally felt too emotionally drained to cry anymore.

Extending his magical senses, he detected the presence of six people below him. One was mortal, three more were fellow sorcerers, another was some bizarre insect hive mind, and the last one's signature bore the distinct sense of a god. One he recognized instantly. With a smirk, he collected himself before teleporting downstairs to the Castle Chapel.

When he arrived, he found himself faced with five figured facing him with weapons drawn and spells drawn. Standing around a table were a human man dressed in a waistcoat with a hook in place of one of his hands, sword drawn and ready for battle, a tall, tan-skinned man in red and black robes holding a serpent staff, an obese, purple-skinned woman with tentacles instead of legs, a green skinned woman in a black robe holding a ball of conjured fire in her hands, and Hades, Greek god of the Underworld.

The Greek deity hadn't been seen since long before Loki was born, but the stories were still told on Asgard millennia later. The Norse trickster had always admired how Hades had used trickery and misdirection to conceal his plan to take over Olympus. His fanboying was cut short though, when the green skinned woman opened her eyes and spoke.

"I'll only ask this once," the woman said calmly. "Who are you and how did you get here?"

"Apologies for the intrusion, m'lday," Loki replied with a bow, taking care to be formal and respectful. While he doubted any of them besides Hades could actually harm him, he wasn't about to be disrespectful towards potential allies. "I am Loki, of Asgard. I landed on this world after falling from the Bifrost which connects Asgard to the other realms." At the mention of Asgard, Hades' eyes went wide with recognition.

"Asgard, eh?" the ruler of the Underworld replied with a smirk. "And how is Odin doing these days anyway? Haven't seen any of the Norse pantheon since I left home." Loki was confused by Hades; meaning, but nevertheless continued.

"When last I saw the Allfather, he'd emerged from the Odinsleep and told me that I didn't matter," Loki answered. "That all my efforts to win his favor were for naught. After that, I let go of Gungnir and fell into a wormhole."

"You're his son, aren't you?" Maleficent asked calmly. "I've seen how children react when they feel their parents don't love them. I would have been a mother myself once, had humans not killed my newborn child as part of a sick ritual to ensure their child would group up with a pure heart."

"I am not his son," Loki spat back, his angry tone masking his inner pain. "All I was to him was a pawn on his cosmic chess board. A means to an end to achieve peace between Asgard and Jotunheim. He may have told others I was his son, he never showed me any affection or love. My attempts to earn his acknowledgement and approval as a worthy son were only met with cold indifference." Maleficent smiled her usual wicked grin as the prince of Asgard finished his rant.

"And what are your intentions now?" she asked, probing to gauge if the god of magic would be positively inclined towards joining their cause. "Obviously you're no longer welcome in Asgard. Perhaps you'd rather out your talents to more productive uses of your abilities than trying to please an unpleasable father." This piqued Loki's interest, before responding.

"What do you have in mind?" he inquired curiously, probing back. _Oh he's good,_ Maleficent mused to herself before answering.

"My colleagues and I have each banded together for one common goal," she answered. "The pursuit of power. The conquest of the known universe. There are more worlds beyond our own, and those with the power and will to rule should do so." Intrigued, Loki let loose an ear-to-ear grin.

"I'm listening."

* * *

 **As of this chapter, I'm now a third of the way through writing Ripple Effects.**

 **Before anyone asks where Loki was during Kingdom Hearts 1, we all know where he was, but the details will be elaborated on next chapter. And to clarify, yes, he fell through a Corridor of Darkness and landed in Hollow Bastion's Grand Hall. This is the room with the big mega Keyhole in it where Sora sacrifices himself all the way back in the original game.**

 **Next chapter: After eight months of membership in the Hellfire Club, Maleficent sends Loki to negotiate with a certain Mad Titan. The Battle of New York ensues.**


	11. Beyond Heimdall's Gaze

**Episode 11: Beyond Heimdall's Gaze:**

 **Hollow Bastion – February 1, 2012**

 **6 Months before Kingdom Hearts 1**

The sound of clashing steel rank throughout the grand hall of Hollow Bastion as the two figures dueled across the room. One was dressed in red and wielded a sword, the other in green and wielded a staff. With a smirk, Loki jabbed his scepter, only for Captain Hook to parry the blow with his sword. But as soon as the two weapons made contact, Loki swung the scepter upwards, knocking the pirate captain off balance long enough for the trickster to teleport behind and knock his opponent to the ground. Hook conceded the sparring match to Loki before the Asgardian helped him up. Their discussion of their performance was cut short when Hades appeared on the platform in front of them.

"Maleficent's calling a meeting in the Castle Chapel," the Greek deity said before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Nodding, Loki teleported himself and Hook down to the showers nearest to their quarters so they could get cleaned up. Once they were all showered and wearing a fresh change of clothes, they teleported back up to the Chapel where their group meetings were usually held. As they arrived they found that they were the last ones to do so. Hades, Jafar, Urusla, Oogie Boogie, and Maleficent herself were all gathered around the table-top holographic projector they used to monitor events throughout the universe.

Loki smiled as he thought of the time on this side of the universe in the last eight months. While he'd been on good terms with everyone back in Asgard, he'd never gotten the respect he'd wanted. He never really had any friends. Sure Sif and the Warriors Three were _occasionally_ friendly to him but they were Thor's friends first and foremost. He'd always been an outcast among Asgardians for not fitting into their Asgardian ideals, and his way of retaliating through tricks and pranks only made them distrust him more.

Here, they respected his abilities and actually considered him a friend. They even tolerated his periodic pranks and mind games because they knew it was in his nature to be a trickster. It was ironic that when he lost everything he'd grown up with, he gained companions who actually felt like his friends. He'd never had a desire to rule initially, but after being told by Odin that his plans for peace with Jotunheim no longer matter, and by extension, that _he_ didn't matter anymore, Loki wanted to prove to his father and himself that he mattered. If he had to take over the universe to do it then so be it. His reflection ended as Maleficent looked over from where the rest of their group was gathered around the table.

"You're late," she commented dryly as Hook and Loki approached the table. Loki only smirked.

"Apologies, Maleficent," he replied. "But we did want to be presentable for this little gathering." Maleficent nodded in understanding before Hook spoke up.

"So what's our next move?" the pirate asked. "Which world or person are we targeting this time?" The green-skinned sorceress gestured to the hologram floating above the small table in the center of the room. The image displayed a large figure, humanoid in shape, seated on a hovering throne, with large planetoids visible in the background. The figure had purple skin, golden armor, and a wrinkled looking chin that suggested that despite his shape he was far from human.

"This," Maleficent began, "is Thanos. Known to his enemies as The Mad Titan. He has a reputation for bringing death and destruction wherever he goes. Given the darkness that evidently exists within his heart, he could be a valuable ally in our plans to use the Heartless to gather the Seven Princesses. Or, he could be a fierce rival with more power than all seven of us combined. He has the potential to be a dangerous wild card, and I believe it is time we sent an emissary to gauge what his intentions are, and whether he would be suitable for membership in our little club."

"So what does he have that we want?" Loki inquired curiously. "Because we obviously wouldn't be going out of our way to recruit someone who by every indication seems to be a rival, unless he brings something to the table that the rest of us don't." Maleficent smiled wickedly.

"Perceptive as always, Loki," she replied. "He is in possession of one of those little trinkets you told us about. A little yellow gemstone with the power to control the minds of others." The prince's eyes widened as he realized what Maleficent was talking about. Taking control of Kingdom Hearts using the seven Princesses was one thing, but if they could get their hands on the Infinity Stones….

"I volunteer to meet with him myself," he said. "I have the most knowledge of the Stones and I'm more physically sturdy than the rest of you. I can take a beating should Thanos be unwilling to join us." Everyone nodded their heads in agreement, and Loki left to pack for his journey. They had no idea how long he would end up negotiating with the Mad Titan, so they all agreed that he should pack for a long stay just in case. A few hours later, he returned to the Chapel and wished them all well in their acquisition of the next Princess of Heart.

Once he said his goodbyes, he used his magic to teleport himself and his bags over to the coordinates they'd uncovered for Thanos' base. Little did any of them realize that this was the last time they would see Loki for the next eleven years.

* * *

 **So that's how Loki went from being part of Maleficent's cabal to Thano's stooge. And yes, Maleficent's interest in the Infinity Stones will be important later when I start the Acolytes of Chaos storyline. And as the chapter title implies, Heimdall can't really see what's going on on the Kingdom Hearts side of the universe. I can't say why, since that's a spoiler for later.**

 **Next chapter: the Avengers recuperate after the Battle of New York and figure out what to do next.**


	12. After New York

**Just a heads up everyone, this is the last chapter to take place before Kingdom Hearts 1. From here on out, we're moving through the KH saga timeline wise.**

* * *

 **Episode 12: After New York:**

 **Avengers Tower – May 5, 2012**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 1**

"So how did it go?" Pepper Potts asked as the newly-christened Avengers walked through the elevator doors into the room of what was now Avengers Tower. It had only been a day since what S.H.I.E.L.D. and the media were calling The Battle of New York, and the team had spent the morning in a meeting with the U.N. general assembly to work out a charter. After their heroics in Manhattan yesterday, they intended to keep on helping people and fighting evil. But it would be on their terms. They weren't going to be treated by governments as glorified mercenaries who had to be told when, where, and if they could act.

They had said as much in their meeting with the General Assembly and the Security Council this morning. While some representatives balked at the idea that the Avengers would be acting on their own, most understood that having the Avengers working directly for any government would defeat the point of them being a neutral team of heroes in the first place. The deal they worked out simply established a system of accountability and oversight in terms of things like international incidents and collateral damage.

As Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, and Thor Odinson emerged from the elevator of Avengers tower, Jane Foster couldn't help but blush. She'd spent the last year studying the nine realms, and she'd been eager to see Thor again, and get some answers on why he never came back. Thor saw her as he walked out of the elevator and made his way towards her, face beaming. He gave her a gentle hug, careful not to crush her with his superhuman strength as they reunited.

"Forgive me for not returning sooner," he said apologetically after kissing her hand. "While fighting my brother on Asgard, the Bifrost was destroyed, cutting my people off from the other realms." Jane's anger lessened as she realized that for all her research into Asgard and the other realms, she'd never considered the possibility that he never came back because his only method of transportation had been damaged or destroyed. "The reconstruction is underway even now," he went on. "And I was only able to come to Earth in order to stop my brother, and it was at great cost, as my father was forced to expend a tremendous amount of power to send me to Earth."

Her anger vanished completely as she began talking with Thor about how long he was going to stay on Earth. Meanwhile, Pepper Potts went up and gave Tony a hug while Kim and Ron headed over to the nearest couch. Barton and Romanov started calling Director Fury at S.H.I.E.L.D., leaving Captain America and Dr. Banner standing awkwardly at the counter while everyone else had split off into groups. After a few hours of chatting, Thor had to take Loki back to Asgard. While the group waited for S.H.I.E.L.D. to bring Thor's brother over from the maximum security prison cell that had been constructed to hold the Hulk, they continued to talk about ideas for the future of the team.

Kim and her husband were going to continue doing the independent heroics that they always did, but they wanted to be part of the team. Tony and Steve were debating whether to set up the team Headquarters in Stark Tower or to turn an old Stark Industries warehouse into a new base. Thor was promising Jane that he would return once the Bifrost was repaired and the Marauders terrorizing the nine realms were defeated. Clint and Natasha were talking to Dr. Banner about getting General Ross of his back so that he wouldn't be hunted by the U.S. military anymore.

When Loki finally arrived under heavy guard, Thor gave Jane a kiss goodbye before taking the Tesseract and using it to return himself and his brother to Asgard. When the two Asgardians were gone, the conversation quickly turned towards what to do next. Kim and Ron managed to talk everyone into volunteering to help clean up from the battle the next day. Since it was already sunset though, Tony ordered everyone takeout on their way back to the tower. As they ate their food, everyone threw in their two cents regarding where to formally set up their base.

Kim and Ron voted in favor of a rural headquarters, arguing that operating out of the Tower was practically an invitation for supervillains to attack, and that would lead to extensive collateral damage if the fighting spilled out into the city. Almost everyone agreed with them on that point, and the idea of converting an old Stark Industries warehouse upstate won by a landslide. As a consolation for Stark's bruised ego, everyone agreed that Avengers Tower would serve as a private residence for all of them, a place to crash whenever they were in New York.

As Tony continued to ramble on about interviews with the press to help boost the team's public image, J.A.R.V.I.S. announced that they had an incoming phone call from S.H.I.E.L.D. Tony told his disembodied A.I. to put the call on speaker, only for J.A.R.V.I.S. to retort that they only wanted to talk to Steve. Confused, the super soldier walked out of the room in search of a phone, and the conversation picked up normally from there. Captain America came back a few hours later saying that S.H.I.E.L.D. had offered him a job, and everyone offered their congratulations, hoping that having a job would be the first step for him to get out into the world again.

An hour later, conversation wound down as everyone headed off to bed. Each member of the team headed off to their respective rooms. Jane, Darcy, and Eric had initially felt reluctant to intrude, but since they were friends with Thor, the rest of the Avengers welcomed the three of them to participate in the group activities, and they were each given their own room in the tower. As everyone drifted off to sleep that night, none of them realized just how much the world had changed that week.

* * *

 **So yeah, rather than going their separate ways, the Avengers are sticking together as an international peacekeeping organization. I borrowed the whole "U.N. charter thing" from the Justice League (or at least, the Young Justice version of it). The purpose of having them have a formal agreement on accountability for international incidents and collateral damage is because in this universe, none of the phase 3 movies ever happen, and to establish that the Avengers are not going to just split up like they did at the end of the movie. That's the same reason why they're going to be operating out of the HQ seen at the end of Age of Ultron.**

 **And yes, at this point in the timeline Kim and Ron are married.**

 **Next chapter: The Convergence happens, but the events of Thor: The Dark World do not.**


	13. Divergent Convergence

**Episode 13: Divergent Convergence:**

 **Dark Elf Ship** ** _Nathalis_** **– November 1, 2013**

 **During Kingdom Hearts 2**

Far off in space, an electronic hum whined across the upper decks of the _Nathalis._ Lights began to blink on along the edges of the hibernation pod one of the top decks as the small metal panels concealing its occupant's face started to retract. Once the panels had been fully retracted and the harness completely unlocked, Malekith's eyes snapped open. After taking a moment to reorient himself, he drowsily climbed up another set of stairs to the ships bridge and walked towards the window. Outside the ship, asteroids tumbled through space, and the Dark Elf king could sense a major shift in the universe.

 **"** **The Convergence awakens us,"** he whispered as he looked down at the hibernation pods on the lower decks opening up to reveal more awakening Dark Elves. Down below, the warriors who fought in the battle of Svartalfheim were emerging from their hibernation pods and looking up to their leader for guidance. _But what do we do now?_ Malekith wondered to himself as he looked down past the warriors at the families emerging from stasis. He hadn't thought about what they would do after that battle five thousand years ago beyond escaping with their lives. Of course they were going to recover the Aether and destroy the nine realms, but he hadn't really thought through how to achieve that this time.

"Might I be of some assistance?" a female voice called out from somewhere to his left. Malekith whipped his head around to find a tall woman with pale green skin and black horns on her head. She was carrying a scepter topped with a green crystal ball and wearing a long black robe with pink and purple fringes.

"Who are you?" he demanded quietly in the All-Tongue, hoping to avoid starting a panic on the ship. "And how did you get aboard our ship?" He refused to allow his people to be wiped out by an unknown foe in their brief period of sleep-induced weakness. Algrim came up behind him, but the ruler of Svartalfheim held his lieutenant back, waiting to see how this intruder would respond.

"I simply travelled through the shadows," the woman replied. "As for who I am, my name is Maleficent. And I have heard much about you, Malekith. I've heard the stories of how Asgard supposedly wiped your people out. And I've come to offer an alliance." Malekith blinked for a moment as he and Algrim processed what she was saying.

"In the past decade," Maleficent went on. "I've assembled a circle of conspirators with the goal of conquering all of reality. The ranks of our little club have thinned in the last year, however. I'm looking to rebuild old alliances and forge new ones, and I thought that given our shared interests in certain gemstones, that you would be interested in aiding me and my cabal in our new campaign." Malekith grinned malevolently as he caught on to which "gemstones" she was referring to, and thought over her proposal before answering.

"And what would I have to gain by allying with you that I cannot achieve alone?" he retorted. Inwardly though, he was already thinking up plans for how this alliance could be of use to him.

"The Hellfire Club's reach expands across the galaxy," Maleficent answered. "If you were to join me in rebuilding my inner circle, you would gain access to advanced technology, ancient knowledge, expanded influence, and far greater resources than you already have. One thing I've learned when dealing with warriors of light is that it's better for the followers of Darkness to have strength in numbers."

"Very well then," Malekith replied with a satisfied smirk. "I will join this alliance, but on one condition. When we obtain the stones, the Aether is mine." Maleficent nodded in agreement before explaining that the cabal was slow in rebuilding after their devastating defeat a little over a year ago. Her only servant was an incompetent oaf, so while he was away running errands for her, she was warping around the universe doing the real work of rebuilding the Hellfire Club. Scouting for potential recruits. Contacting old allies and acquaintances.

With her inner circle broken, she tasked Malekith with performing reconnaissance on the Nine Realms, gathering intel on the state of things in this corner of the universe so that once their cabal had regained its strength, they would be ready to strike. With their alliance forged, Maleficent departed through a Dark Corridor as Malekith walked down to the lower decks to check on the women and children. Even if attending to the wellbeing of his subjects wasn't one of his responsibilities as king of the Dark Elves, it served to remind him of what they were fighting for.

 **"** **My king,"** Algrim began nervously. **"Forgive my bluntness, but why should we trust this outsider? She may be from one of the Fragments, but even if she is honest about her intentions, she is clearly the type of being who only cares about herself."**

 **"** **Which is why our alliance with her and her cabal is only one of convenience,"** Malekith answered. **"She and her conspirators are but a means to an end for us. They will help us obtain the Infinity Stones, or at the very least recover the Aether, and then we will destroy them just as we will the Asgardians. I will announce this to the rest of the ship in a moment so I do not have to explain this more than once."** His lieutenant nodded in understanding and went in search of the helmsman so they could set course for Midgard. The best way to know what had changed in the Nine realms in the past five millennia was to travel to the heart of Yggdrasil and work their way outwards.

 _Soon, Nathalis,_ he prayed silently to his long deceased wife. _Soon._ As the surviving members of the Dark Elf race emerged from their stasis pods and made their way up to the ship's mess hall to eat after awakening from their long slumber, Malekith made his way back to the bridge so he could make the announcement of their next course of action. They were going to heed Maleficent's request and learn all they could about the state of the world tree. While his warriors would not be happy about fighting, they would understand the need for secrecy. In order to do the most damage, they needed to maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible.

They would spend the next three years learning everything there was to know about what they'd missed while they were hibernating. About Bor's adopted grandson and his invasion of Midgard. About the group of mortals (with the exception of Bor's biological grandson) known as The Avengers who formed to stop him. About the survival of the group known as Hydra, the exposure of the Inhumans, a discarded genetics experiment conducted by the Kree eons ago, and the previous attempt to attack the planet by the Lorwardians. Three years after their awakening, the Dark Elves rendezvoused with Maleficent in a long disused prison facility called the Kiln, and provided her with all the information the reborn Hellfire Club needed to being its campaign of conquest anew.

* * *

 **I had the Dark Elves be awakened by the Convergence instead of the Aethir like in the movie because in this story I'm creating, the events of Thor: The Dark World never happen (mainly because I don't want Loki getting out of prison, Frigga dying, etc. to happen until later on in the Acolytes of Chaos saga. The whole thing with Thor, Sif, and the warriors three fighting the marauders in Vanheim still happens, but after a night of celebration on Asgard, Thor returns to Earth to be with Jane, and he helps her with her convergence research.**

 **This chapter is mainly to show that Maleficent isn't just sitting around villains vale in KH2 while Pete's causing trouble in the worlds. She's out looking for potential candidates for her new alliance.**

 **As for the name of the group being the Hellfire Club, I know there's an evil organization with the same name from the X – Men comics, but I heard the name be used to describe Maleficent's team in Kingdom Hearts 1 and it's been stuck in my head as my personal nickname for the Disney villain alliance ever since.**

 **Next chapter: Project Insight destroys S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, but the agency itself refuses to go down with the ships.**


	14. Cut Off One Head

**Just to clarify before anybody gets confused, the dynamic between Maleficent and Malekith in the Acolytes of Chaos storyline is going to be a lot like Darth Maul and Pre Vizsla in Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 5 or Long Feng and Azula in Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2. They each have their own agenda and both plan on disposing of the other once they get what they want. As for who's the Long Feng and who's the Azula or Maul/Vizsla in the partnership, that's up for debate until the story gets that far.**

 **And head's up, this chapter's going to be a pretty** ** _long_** **one. Naturally, the chapter titles are all going to be Hydra themed. And this is the chapter where the T-rating for language really starts popping up. A lot of the dialogue in the second half of the chapter is quoted from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "One Door Closes."**

* * *

 **Episode 14: Cut Off One Head:**

 **Avengers Tower – April 4, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

"How are we doing?" Natasha Romanov asked Maria Hill, newly minted Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the brunette woman typed furiously on the holographic keyboard in the common room of Avengers Tower. With the revelation of Hydra's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D., the agency was crippled and world leaders were looking for answers. While Hill, as Director Fury's lieutenant, assumed command of the loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who remained and lead them in expunging the Hydra infiltrators. The S.A.C.K. members within S.H.I.E.L.D. had been preparing for this scenario for decades now, so the agency itself wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Unfortunately, things were complicated right now, and world governments wanted a simple answer. Which was why Agent Romanov would be testifying in hearings before congress and the U.N. all week defending S.H.I.E.L.D.'s good name and serving as a public defender of the agents who remained loyal to the organization and what it stands for. The new director herself would be spending that time assessing who was still loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. and taking stock of their remaining base.

It had been a long day for all of them. Captain America was in the hospital after his fall into the Potomac, and Sam Wilson was busy keeping him company. Nick Fury had gone into hiding, feeling that it was time for him to step down from his position as director and let the world continue to believe that he was dead. Agent Barton was at his family homestead. And Bucky Barnes, until-recently-deceased Howling Commando and the infamous Winter Soldier, had managed to break free of his Hydra brainwashing. His memories were still coming back to him in bits and pieces, but he would recover fully in time. To prove he was on their side, he provided Hill and Romanov with what little intel he possessed on Hydra's locations.

But once Steve woke up, he was heading out again. He'd argued that they had a diminishing window of opportunity. Nobody in Hydra knew that he had broken free of his conditioning, so he could use that status to act as a Trojan horse, infiltrating the remaining Hydra bases in order to bring them down from the inside. Steve was hesitant to agree to that plan, not wanting to lose his best friend after he just got him back, but Bucky insisted that it would his way to atone for the things he'd done.

"Besides," he argued. "Once the U.N. puts me on trial for everything I've done, the secret will be out. We have to act now before that news reaches Hydra." Reluctantly, Steve acquiesced, and Bucky headed out to Eastern Europe two days after the battle, his memories of his past becoming clearer and more complete with each passing day. With Hydra exposed, the Avengers assembled within days of the battle to push the offensive. Hydra may have suffered a setback with Captain America's thwarting of Project Insight, but the ancient organization was far from beaten.

* * *

 **The Iliad – April 4, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

Gunfire rang out through the corridors of the Iliad as Barbara "Bobbi" Morse, Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, Isabelle Hartley, and two S.H.I.E.L.D. trainees made their way to the ships conference room. In the wake of Nick Fury's death and Hydra's exposure, Commander Hill had dispatched Morse and Hartley to one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s aircraft carriers to confirm the fate of its commander, Agent Robert Gonzales, and either retake the ship from Hydra if at all possible, or exfiltrate the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. loyalists and sink the ship if not. The Iliad's primary cargo was too dangerous to allow it to fall into Hydra's hands.

Eventually, they reached the conference room, and Bobbi nodded before pulled the door open as the five armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents moved into the room, weapons drawn in case there were any Hydra operatives hiding in the room. Their expressions remained stoic as they made their way past countless dead bodies. But whether they were S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra was anyone's guess. As they crept through the empty room, Bobbi and Isabelle saw someone readying a machine gun from behind a table. Though they hadn't met the man, they'd seen his photo enough to recognize him without needing to see his face.

"Commander Gonzales, wait!" Agent Morse called out as she held up her hands to show she meant no harm.

"We're not Hydra," Hartley reassured the wounded officer.

"I've heard that before," the aged commander retorted angrily.

"I'm Agent Bobby Morse," Bobbi replied. "We're here under Fury and Hill's orders. Protocol AST-A06."

"Thank God," Commander Gonzales groaned as he lowered his weapon. "It's been a bastard of a day."

"Sir," Bobbi said. "Our mission is to get you off this ship and either retake it or sink it depending on whether we can gain control soon enough."

"That man there had an ax," the injured officer commented, gesturing towards the nearby corpse of what was presumably a Hydra agent. "Now I have it," he added before nodding towards the bloody gash on his leg. "Still left quite a mark." Explosions echoed through the halls of the ship as Bobbi the two trainees quickly worked to straighten Gonzales' leg while Mack told the man a story about how the most dangerous kind of pain was the kind you couldn't feel to take his mind off his leg wound as they worked.

"Hey guys," Hartley called out, rushing into the room from her position as sentry. "We gotta move. Hydra's closing in on both sides."

"His leg's bad," Bobbi explained as Mack and the trainees continued to bandage and splint Gonzales' leg. "Do you think you can clear a path to the top deck and ready the chopper?"

"An opportunity to kill more of these bastards?" Isabelle asked rhetorically, cheerfully chocking her gun as she spoke.

"I love your whole thing, you know that?" Mockingbird replied. "Hold out for them as long as you can. They'll be right behind you." Agent Hartley didn't even have to ask where her partner was going to go. Their orders were to retake or sink the ship once Gonzalles was rescued, so Bobbi was going to stay behind and rally the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. loyalists while the rest of the group got the commander to safety. If there weren't enough loyal agents left to retake the ship, she was going to head back to the server core where they'd rescued Mack and the trainees and plant a disc that would remotely detonate every combustible weapon on board and sink the carrier.

"If I don't make it out," she went on. "Could you give this to Hunter?" She handed Isabelle a keychain for "Franny's Saloon," that was a memento of the times she'd shared with her ex-husband. Despite their frequent arguments and eventual divorce, she still cared about him.

"Bobbi, He's gonna be pissed," Izzy replied as she accepted the keychain. "You know that?" Agent Morse nodded in response before her combat partner left the room. As Mack walked up with a shotgun in his hands, she asked if he and the trainees could carry Gonzales up to the chopper before explaining her own orders. Mack wanted to stay and fight and protested that if she had to sink the ship there'd be no time for her to make it out before the Iliad was 80 feet underwater. Bobbi protested that the disc was designed so that she could remotely detonate it from a distance without risk of Hydra agents finding and removing it, but Mack nevertheless protested why Fury would send her on a suicide mission. Gonzales then explained about the ship's cargo and insisted on staying behind to help retake the ship.

"I can't let you waste your time or your resources trying to get me off this ship while it's in play," the commander said firmly. "I'm coming with you." Bobbi and Mack knew from his tone that he was staying to fight and refused to take no for an answer, and Mack continued to remind Bobbi that she didn't have to be stubborn and achieve her objective alone.

"God help us, I'm still the captain of this ship, Agent Morse," Gonzales said. "We're going to retake this ship together, no arguments. Now let's move." With that, the group made their way back out through the corridors until they met up with Agent Hartley. They found her fighting off Hydra goons with a knife, and once their foes had all been eliminated, she happily reported that a group of loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had taken control of the top deck. Realizing that all Hydra agents left on the ship were now trapped on board, Gonzales ordered their ragtag group to fall back to the operations center.

Once they were all inside, the group armed themselves and set up a bottleneck inside the ship's command center. Despite being outnumbered three to one, the remaining Hydra agents were trapped. Now it was just a matter of luring them all towards strategically placed choke points to even the odds. By the end of the day, the Iliad was back under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s control. Although the agency was heavily crippled by Hydra's uprising, they would survive. With Maria Hill taking command of the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra's forces on the run, those who stayed loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. would not vanish quietly into the shadows. They would stand and fight to protect the people of Earth.

* * *

 **So yeah, that happened. As I was planning the overall story of the Acolytes of Chaos saga, I realized that things would make more sense (and be a lot simpler) if S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't collapse at the end of Winter Soldier (since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the last third of Season 1 onwards is focused on rebuilding the agency, it was simpler to have it never collapse in the first place). And before anyone cries fowl about Cap's decision to disband it in the movies, there's a reason he didn't do it in this universe. But that reason is a spoiler for a later chapter.**

 **And as for Bucky regaining his memories, I'm having it happen faster than in canon (since it's unclear in Winter Soldier and Ant-Man how quickly it's returning, I'm just going with the idea that it's happening slowly), because I wanted to have the Steve and Bucky thing happen earlier. As for Bucky going undercover to sabotage Hydra that was inspired by a number of different fanfics (like the Avengers/Harry Potter crossover Child of the Storm and the Percy Jackson/Avengers crossover And You Know Heroes Aren't Meant To Survive), particularly the latter one which had Bucky convince Quicksilver and Scarlet to change sides, which I'll be borrowing in order to have those two defect from Hydra without Ultron's existence, since Age of Ultron is does not happen in this universe (not entirely at least. It's like with Thor: The Dark World. Only part of that movie occurs in this universe. In the case of Age of Ultron, only that opening battle is canon in this universe. I did warn you all this would be AU after Winter Soldier)**

 **Next chapter: we catch up with the rest of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast in the aftermath of the battle at the Triskellion.**


	15. Two More Shall Take Its Place

**As you can all tell, this chapter and the previous one are the beginning of the 10 part arc I've got going to elaborate on what's happening post-Winter Soldier in this universe on Earth.**

 **Dialogue from the first five and a half paragraphs comes from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode Turn, Turn, Turn.**

* * *

 **Episode 15: Two More Shall Take Its Place:**

 **The Hub – April 4, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

Coulson didn't know whether to be relieved or concerned when Victoria Hand and her team of loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents barged into the room with weapons drawn. John Garret, an agent he trusted and considered a friend, was not only a member of Hydra, but also the elusive Clairvoyant responsible for the Centipede conspiracy he and his team had been tracking for the last several months. And based on how she took control of the bus, he couldn't be sure whether or not she was Hydra too.

"I'm not Hydra," he protested as Hand's team ordered Coulson, May, and Leo Fitz (who was climbing out from under the desk he'd been hiding under) not to move. Jemma Simmons raced forward and hugged Fitz, making the team's technician blush. Only Grant Ward and Daisy Johnson were unaccounted for at the moment, and Coulson was going to find them with or without Victoria's help.

"We heard," Agent Hand replied reassuringly. "Everything." She and Coulson looked over to where one of her men was retrieving a listening device planted on the wall of the room they were in. Coulson nodded in understanding. Victoria Hand was notorious for ensuring The Hub was prepared for any contingency, no matter how improbable or unlikely it was. She would have installed microphones in every room of the base the minute Hydra's infiltration was exposed.

"Who is?" Coulson asked. "How deep does it go?" As a member of S.A.C.K., not even he, Daisy, and May knew how far up the ladder Hydra's moles had gotten. Hand didn't give him answer, but the mournful look on her face told him everything he needed to know. This went all the way to the upper levels. Daisy and Ward caught up with the team as they watched the traitors arrested in the Hub be lead away in handcuffs.

The shouts of agent Antione Triplett echoed through the hallway as he screamed his anger and pain at Garret's betrayal. Garret had been the younger agent's mentor, and as the Clairvoyant was also responsible for the murder of several of Trip's frends who got in hindsight obviously got too close to his secrets. Seeing the shocked and confused look on Ward's face, Coulson pulled the agent aside and explained to him what had happened. An hour later, Hand and Coulson were standing in mission control receiving updates of the ongoing war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra.

"Captain America has defeated the Helicarriers at the Triskellion," she commented. "But his status is unknown. In light of Fury's death, Commander Hill has assumed the directorship and is taking command of the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. We may have secured the Hub, Coulson, but this war is just beginning. Hydra factions have taken control of our East-African headquarters and the Treehouse. And those are just the ones we know of."

"And until Director Hill can get everyone who's still loyal on the same page, there's going to be a scramble," Coulson observed. "A power grab."

"I'll head to the Fridge," Hand replied. "At least that facility is secure."

"I don't need to remind you how imperative it is that it stay that way," Coulson said.

"And I'll find Agent Garret the smallest, darkest cell in the ice box," she finished.

"I'd like to turn the key on that cell myself," Ward interjected from where he was standing near the door. "If you don't mind, sir. He was my S.O. I feel like I should've known. It's my duty to – "

"No one knew," Coulson interrupted. "I didn't know. That's how he beat us. By being a friend."

"I spent years with that bastard," Ward replied sadly. "Looked up to him. I want to see him suffer." Hand nodded.

"I don't mind the company," she answered. "And I could always use a man of your skills." The decision made, she turned to Coulson.

"Pick up the pieces here at the Hub if you can," she instructed him. "And only communicate using one of these." She handed him an old secure phone from back in the early days of S.H.I.E.L.D. "With the exception of Director Hill, you and I may be the highest ranking agents who aren't Hydra or dead. Stay in touch, Agent Coulson." The two high-ranking agents shook hands before Hand and Ward left the room to take Garret off to prison. When they were gone, Coulson pulled out his Whitmore Industries-issued phone and called the S.A.C.K. council to fill them in on his status.

While that was happening, Daisy Johnson was aboard the Bus with Fitz and Trip repairing the plane's internal systems. It had become her home away from home after she'd joined S.H.I.E.L.D. last year. Hydra's exposure just added another layer to how strange her life was compared to the rest of the world. She'd grown up in Milwaukee with her parents, with full knowledge of her Inhuman heritage. There'd been a brief time where she'd been placed in an orphanage when Hydra tried to kidnap her, but members of the S.A.C.K. within S.H.I.E.L.D. had quickly picked her up and reunited her with her parents.

From there, her childhood had been pretty normal. Aside from mom having to wear hats and other face-concealing headwear whenever they went somewhere that had security cameras, but that was a necessary precaution given Hydra's existence within S.H.I.E.L.D. She'd gone through the Mist a few months before her fourteenth birthday, and she'd emerged with the ability to tap into the vibrational frequency of anything. She spent the weeks following her Terrigenisis in Lai Xi, where she met Lincoln Campbell, a boy with electrical powers. Despite their dislike of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cover ups and hiding information they felt the public had a right to know, both of them grew up with a grudging respect for S.H.I.E.L.D.

After she graduated college, she decided that she wanted to join S.H.I.E.L.D. Like she'd told her mom, she wanted to show Inhumans that they could make a difference in the world, and she already had made a difference. She'd approached Mike Peterson as an undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, offering him a job and warning him about the dangers of the extremis in his system. He'd come quietly instead of making a scene, and FitzSimmons were able to use the dendrotoxin capsules of their I.C.E.R. prototype to cure the serum's explosive instability. Her thoughts were snapped back to the present by her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. She pulled it out, looked at the caller ID, and answered the phone.

"Hey, Dad," she said over the phone, her fatigue apparent in her voice. "I'm alright."

"Oh, thank goodness," Calvin Johnson replied, breathing a sigh of relief over the phone. "Your mother and I saw the news about Hydra and we've been worried sick all morning. Where are you?"

"I'm at the Hub," she answered. "All the Hydra agents here have been flushed out and are being flown off to prison as we speak. My team's okay. None of them turned out to be Hydra, but our plane took a beating so I'm helping Fitz repair the computer systems. After that we're playing everything by ear and getting the base operational again. What's the word back in Lai Shi?"

"Oh, things are crazy over there," her dad responded. "The Elders are arguing about whether or not to declare war or relocate Afterlife to a more secure location. Your mother had to step in and help calm everyone down before they ended up doing anything they'd regret." Daisy nodded in understanding. Inhuman society was very isolationist, and those who wanted to live among normal humans were tolerated at best. But that was another discussion for another time.

"I've gotta go, dad," Daisy said as Fitz called out to her from down the stairs. "There's a lot of stuff they need my help with, but I'll call mom when I get the chance." After her father said goodbye, she hung up the phone and headed downstairs to help Fitz. Once she was finished, she was going to try to call her mom, and after that, get a hold of Lincoln and let her boyfriend know she was okay.

Meanwhile, Melinda Garner finished letting her husband and daughter know she was alright and was headed for the command center where she knew Coulson would be supervising the Hub's repairs. She knew that despite the urgency of the Hydra situation he was still angry with her for hiding the fact that she had been monitoring Fury for him. He understood her reasons for not wanting fear of side effects to affect his judgement and ability to do his job, but he was still frustrated at being kept in the dark for so long. Despite his anger, though, he accepted her offer to make it up to him by digging up everything she could on the T.A.H.I.T.I. Project, and she set off for Washington D.C. the next morning to make contact with Director Hill.

* * *

 **S.H.I.E.L.D. Prison – April 5, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re: Coded**

Raina smiled as she placed another origami flower on the shelf of her small prison cell. Her attention was soon drawn, however, to the sudden sounds of gunfire and explosions outside the door. Curious, she sat back down on her bed and waited to see what would happen. She was shocked when Grant Ward, one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents responsible for her imprisonment, opened the door to her cell.

"What are you doing here?" she asked as he walked over to the metal shelf opposite the one with her flowers. Her confusion grew as he set his gun down on the shelf and rummaged through his backpack until he pulled out a rectangular box and opened it to reveal a red flower dress.

"A gift from the Clairvoyant," he said, causing Raina to smile with understanding happiness at her rescue.

* * *

 **And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we're now halfway through Ripple Effects.**

 **So just to clarify the remaining bits of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Backstory that aren't covered in this arc but people will be asking about anyway:**

 **-Miles is Skye's ex-boyfriend from college. She still has contacts in Rising Tide that she met through him.**

 **-Even though the Dark Elves didn't attack Asgard during the convergence in this universe, Lorelei still escaped from Asgardian prison, necessitating Sif bring her in, only this time, Odin authorized the use of lethal force against Lorelei if necessary given her powers.**

 **-Obviously Skye never develops an attraction to Ward and he never sleeps with May, but he still has his creepy obsessive crush on Skye.**

 **-Since Skye obviously isn't looking for her parents in this 'verse, her search for that doesn't happen, but she nevertheless has friction with the more rule-following S.H.I.E.L.D. agents due to her unorthodox, outside the box methods.**

 **Other than that and whatever I mentioned in this chapter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 happened pretty much the same as in canon.**

 **Next chapter: Hydra raids the Fridge and FitzSimmons get dumped into the ocean by Ward.**


	16. Out of the Shadows

**The chapter title (and the next one) is an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reference. Brownie points for those who get it.**

* * *

 **Episode 16: Out of the Shadows:**

 **Providence Base – April 6, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

"Here's something," Daisy commented as she pulled up police reports in an attempt to track down the escaped inmates of the Fridge. Hydra had managed to raid the prison the previous day and released its occupants into the wild. With S.H.I.E.L.D. loyalists stretched thin recovering from the Hydra uprising and working on regaining control of S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities, her team had been forced to split up. Agent May was in Washington D.C. talking to Director Hill about the origins of the T.A.H.I.T.I. Project. Ward was M.I.A., and Coulson, Fitz, Triplett and Simmons had gone off to Portland to chase down one of the escaped inmates, a man named Marcus Daniels.

Meanwhile she and a few of Hand's subordinates had been sent up to Providence, a secret bunker in the Canadian wilderness, to help defend it from potential Hydra attacks since it's lone occupant, Agent Eric Koenig, wasn't fully trained when it came to combat. Right now, the two of them were in his office, doing everything they could to track down the whack jobs who had escaped from the Fridge. She pulled up a police report from Morocco that unfortunately didn't really help them, since it described just about every mugging ever.

After she realized that Agent Koenig could track the movements of everyone in the base through the security badges he'd issued them earlier that day, Daisy suggested hacking NSA satellites (since S.H.I.E.L.D.'s were down to the Hydra uprising) to track where the prisoners went after leaving the Fridge. Impressed, Koenig handed her the keys to the communications satellite room and told her to start the hack but wire the feed to the monitors in his office.

An hour later, she and Agent Koenig were sitting back in the command room as the slightly fuzzy images of the Fridge breakout cleared up on the wall-mounted computer monitors. But their joy turned to horror when they realized that Ward and Garret were the first ones in before Hydra stormed the building. Two and two came together pretty quickly. Daisy resisted the urge to vomit as she realized the truth. Ward was an agent of Hydra. She found his crush on her a little creepy and she already had a boyfriend but she at least trusted Ward to have her back. And now he had freed Garret. Meaning that Victoria Hand was dead.

Memories of Ward bonding with the other members of their team flashed through her mind as she retroactively saw them for what they really were: deliberate attempts to gain everyone's trust. Remembering that Ward had contacted the team and promised to rendezvous with Coulson, FitzSimmons, and Triplett in Portland, she snapped herself out of her stupor and told Koenig about the planned rendezvous before walking out of the room and pulling out her S.A.C.K.-issued phone to call Coulson and warn him. _Hopefully there's still time to stop that son of a bitch before it's too late,_ she thought to herself as she hastily dialed Coulson's number.

* * *

 **Portland, Oregon – August 6, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

"You're safe," Coulson whispered to his girlfriend Audrey Nathan as he held her hand. "I'm still here. I promise I'm still here with you." Marcus Daniels had been thrown into the Fridge for his obsessive stalking of her years ago. He and Audrey had been dating ever since, although his career made their relationship into a long-distance one, he still visited her whenever he could. But while many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (including Barton and Romanov since he was their handler) knew that Coulson was still alive, since she was a civilian she wasn't privy to that secret. But when Marcus Daniels escaped from prison and showed up in her life again, Coulson resolved that it was time to bring her, and at the same time, the rest of the Avengers, into the loop.

"Phil," she whispered after he kissed her gently on the forehead. If things had turned out differently, he might have quietly slipped off before she could open her eyes. But instead, he leaned over her, smiling warmly as she opened her eyes. "You're alive!?" she gasped. "Am I… Am I dreaming?"

"You're not," he replied with a smile. "S.H.I.E.L.D. used some kind of experimental drug to bring me back from the dead. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but they wanted to keep the amount of people who knew to a minimum in case I suffered from any dangerous side-effects."

"It's alright," she said as he helped her up off the stage where she'd been playing her cello in an effort to help S.H.I.E.L.D. lure Daniels into a trap. "I'm just happy to see you." The two of them talked about the future of their relationship as they walked back to her apartment while FitzSimmons and Triplett carried Daniels' unconscious body back to the bus. Coulson said goodbye to Audrey and was just about to head over to the airfield where they'd parked the plane when his phone rang. He picked it up and listened as Simmons reported that the Bus was gone.

He was about to ask Simmons what was going on when his other phone buzzed. As he listened to Simmons asking what to do over the phone, he pulled his encrypted S.A.C.K. phone out of his pocket with his free hand and found a text message from his protégé Daisy Johnson that made his blood run cold. _"Ward is Hydra"_ her message – no, her warning – read. Rocked by Ward's betrayal, he relayed the message to Simmons and was far from surprised to hear Fitz angrily throwing equipment around as he tried to deny the facts. While Daisy couldn't necessarily include evidence in a text message, she'd been sent to Providence to get satellite footage of the Fridge breakout.

As he raced over to the airfield, he hung up on Simmons and called Daisy on his other cell phone. He was relieved when the Inhuman agent told him that she was on her way in Garret's jump-jet and would be there shortly. As he reached the airfield, he discussed the issue with Fitz, Simmons, and Trip while they waited for their ride. Thankfully, Daisy had thought to take the backup hard drive she'd kept all the team's research and tech specs on back from that traitor before he left the hub. _But we need to get our plane back and figure out how to stop that traitor before he and Garret can do any more damage,_ Coulson thought to himself as Fitz kept trying to come up with an explanation for Ward's actions that didn't involve him willingly betraying the team.

* * *

 **So yeah, I figured since I'm going AU post Winter Soldier I figured I should give Coulson the reunion with his cellist girlfriend many of us felt should have happened in canon. And eventually the Avengers will be brought in on the secret of Coulson's survival. I love Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I really wish that they would at least either have a scene where the Avengers learn he's alive (a surprise appearance in Captain America: Civil War would be more practical than having the Avengers show up in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., even though it's the opposite in terms of which makes more sense from a storytelling perspective) or just a line confirming that at some point they've already found out. (the Black Widow tie-in novel confirms that Black Widow was already told at some point between his resurrection and AOS' series premiere, so all we really need is an answer of whether she told the rest of the Avengers)**

 **And just so you know, all the phones the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are using in these chapters are encrypted so don't worry about anyone listening in on their calls.**

 **Next chapter: The heavily modified Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 finale.**


	17. Into The Light

**Dialogue for the first few chapters comes from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1 finale, Beginning of the End. Last chapter had small snippets of dialogue borrowed from the episode The Only Light In the Darkness.**

* * *

 **Episode 17: Into the Light:**

 **Cybertech Facility – April 9, 2014**

 **5 Months before Re:Coded**

"Without regular injections, they're just men," Coulson explained to the U.S. army generals he and his team had rescued from Hydra's Cybertech facility as American soldiers escorted the captured Hydra agents away. It had been a long last few days. After Ward and Garret stole the Bus, they'd taken the Jump Jet back to providence to regroup before infiltrating a Cybertech office in order to learn more about Deathlok and the Centipede Program.

From there, they'd attacked Hydra's Barber shop headquarters, where Fitz and Simmons boarded the bus in an attempt to take out Garret, only to be captured and dumped into the ocean by Ward. But before their ejection from the Bus, Fitz managed to use Triplett's grandfather's joy buzzer EMP to damage Garret's cybernetics, forcing him to take a modified version of the GH serum used to resurrect Coulson to save his life. And from there Garret went completely insane. After the barbershop headquarters, they found and raided the main Cybertech facility where Garret's Centipede Project was based. With Garret dead and Ian Quinn in custody, things were looking up.

"Once doctors remove their electronic eyes," Coulson went on. "They'll be essentially back to normal."

"Minus an eye of course," Triplett commented as one of the soldiers who'd arrived to help clean up after the battle brought a bound Grant Ward up to Coulson. During the battle, May had fought Ward in the lower levels of the facility and nailed him to the floor with a nail gun before fracturing his larynx with a single punch. Ward had made multiple failed attempts to get into her pants before the Hydra uprising, and she was infuriated to learn that he'd been trying to tempt her away from Andrew in order to protect his cover.

"Your attempt to cross off Fitz and Simmons failed," Coulson told Ward. Nick Fury (who it turned out had only faked his death) had rescued the two of them after they'd escaped from the containment module they'd been ejected in. "But Fitz may never be the same again," he went on. "So I'm going to invent new ways to ruin the rest of your life. And we'll do whatever's necessary to get Hydra intel from you, but your torture… that's going to be internal."

"And a little bit external," May added, still angry at Ward's arrogance in thinking he could seduce her away from her husband.

"Sure," Coulson added. "Some of that." He turned back to Ward. "But you devoted your entire life to a deranged Narcissist who never gave a damn about anyone. And now he's dead. And you've got the rest of your life to wrestle with the question "who are you without him?" With that, Ward was taken away. Outside, Daisy was talking to Mike Peterson about his desire to atone for his actions before he could face his son. Mike wanted to strike out on his own, but Daisy reminded him that he was still part of S.H.I.E.L.D., and pointed out that being a field agent would help give him concrete goals beyond wandering the earth looking for ways to make up for what Hydra had forced him to do.

The following morning, Fury, Triplett, and the remaining members of Coulson's team were on the Bus flying towards an undisclosed location. Maria Hill and Natasha Romanov had made a deal with the United Nations and other world governments. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who remain loyal to the agency and what it stands for would not be punished or prosecuted for the actions of their superiors and co-workers. In return for continued government funding, any bases that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't have the manpower to keep operational on their own such as Providence and The Hub would be turned over to the local governments.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was rising from its own ashes. A new S.H.I.E.L.D., smaller, with greatly reduced resources and a smaller budget, but also better. With Hydra's corruption gone, S.H.I.E.L.D. would be a lot kinder and gentler towards the people it was founded to protect. Only a select few people were privy to the knowledge of Nick Fury's survival, and he intended to keep it that way. Nevertheless, the former director was still fighting the good fight, and after telling Coulson why he put him through the T.A.H.I.T.I. Program (it was designed to bring a fallen Avenger, and as far as Fury was concerned Phil was one), Fury took off in the commandeered Jump-Jet to fight Hydra forces in Eastern Europe.

A few hours later, the Bus touched down in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new headquarters, an underground bunker called The Playground. The team was reunited with Simmons as loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents began to regroup for the conflict ahead. As one of the highest ranking agents left alive and loyal, Coulson was swiftly appointed Director Hill's second in command, and his survival was quickly shared to the rest of the Avengers. They were mad at Fury, Barton, and Romanov for keeping his resurrection a secret, but they eventually came around. With the help of the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D. would endure. The battle for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s soul was over, but the war against Hydra… That had only just begun.

* * *

 **So basically the battle at Cybertech was more or less the same as in canon but the events leading up to it were slightly tweaked, as were the events afterwards.**

 **So some of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 is the same as in canon for this fic, but other parts are different. I'm going to focus on other aspects of the Acolytes of Chaos universe for the next three chapters then come back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to show how the events of Season 2 are different in this 'verse.**

 **Coming up next, we skip ahead a few months to the day after Guardians of the Galaxy. Readers of The Xehanort War already know what's coming. For those who don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about, grab your Thanos comics and cue One-Winged Angel. It's the Thanos/Sephiroth death match everyone's been waiting for.**


	18. Titans And Angels

**For those who haven't read The Xehanort War, Sephiroth got some POV sections revealing a bit of his backstory, namely that he works as a mercenary for hire whenever he's not trying to make Cloud turn to the dark side (wrong franchise, I know, but you get my point), and that shortly before re:Coded Young Xehanort hired Sephiroth to assassinate Thanos because Xehanort viewed the Mad Titan as a potential rival. I've referenced that battle multiple times during TXW and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it justice. But I'm going to try.**

 **The names for Sephiroths attacks come from the Kingdom Hearts Wikia, and Thanos' energy absorption/projection powers are from the comics. I figured he needed some powers beyond just super strength, durability, and stamina.**

* * *

 **Episode 18: Titans and Angels:**

 **Titan's Refuge – August 5, 2014**

 **1 Month before Re:Coded**

Thanos was furious. His plans to obtain the Infinity Stones had all but collapsed. Loki had failed to bring him the Tesseract, leaving the Mind Stone on Earth while the cube was taken back to Asgard. The locations of the Time, Soul, and Reality stones were unknown, and his deal with Ronan to destroy Turo in exchange for the Power Stone had backfired spectacularly. Not only had the Kree warlord double-crossed him and taken the gem for himself, but with his death, the Infinity Stone was now in the possession of the Galactic Armada.

He debating whether or not to leave his sanctuary and find more "daughters" to recruit when a strange mass of black and blue smoke appeared at the top of the stairs leading down towards where the remnants of the Chiaturi were gathered. Intrigued, the Mad Titan climbed down off his throne to investigate. As he did so, a lone figure emerged from the mass of smoke before it dissipated off into space. At first glance, he appeared to be a simple Terran, albeit one with insanely long silver hair and a ten-foot katana on his belt. But the black feathered wing sprouting from his back was a dead giveaway that he was anything but.

"Who are you?" Thanos asked demandingly, curious to learn about a potential ally. "And why have you come here? Do you know who I am?" He wasn't overly concerned with how the visitor had arrived in his refuge. Loki had arrived the same way just over three years ago. But with his reputation as a galactic conqueror and mass murderer, the only people who ever dared visit his domain were amateur heroes seeking to prove their worthy by defeating him in single combat, or other warlords attempting to forge an alliance with him.

"Apologies for the intrusion, Lord Thanos," the intruder replied. "My name is Sephiroth. Where I came from or how I came to be here is not important. As for why I've sought you out, you have powerful rivals with a lot of money who want you dead." With that, Sephiroth drew his masimune and charged. With inhumanly fast reflexes, Thanos blocked the One-Winged Angel's rapid-fire Flash attack and managed to backhand the dark being across the asteroid with one hand. Sephiroth recovered and retaliated with an eight-slash combo before slashing upwards. The Mad Titan was able to block most of Sephiroth's combo but was knocked into the air by his upward slash.

Thanos retaliated by absorbing cosmic energy from around the asteroid and projecting it into a hammer before swinging and knocking Sephiroth through the air. Sephiroth teleported away before the Titan could follow up with another swing and promptly launched into three consecutive aerial combos as he slashed at Thanos with his ten-foot blade. As Thanos fell back towards the ground, he lashed out with his foot and kicked Sephiroth in the stomach before he could get started on a fourth combo.

Sephiroth quickly regained his footing and raised his hand toward the sky as a massive beam of fire launched upwards into space. Thanos ran as quickly as he could to stay out of reach of his opponent's Firaga Wall. As the inferno faded, Thanos swung his hammer, only to be knocked by a large black orb that was quickly followed up by several more Shadow Flares. Sephiroth took advantage of his target's distraction to land a few more combos that managed to put some more dents in the purple-skinned alien's armor. The fight went on like this for hours, each side giving as much damage as they took. _Time to end this,_ Sephiroth eventually thought to himself as he teleported out of the reach of Thanos' energy weapons and began to chant.

"DESCEND, HEARTLESS ANGEL!" He called out, and with a blaring trumpet, the spell was cast. Not even the Mad Titan was immune. Thanos staggered back, his body weakened, his energy completely expended. In a flash Sephiroth warped behind him and kicked him forward into the dirt. As Thanos struggled to his feet, the One-Winged Angel appeared by his side, sword drawn. "It's nothing personal," the dark angel said. "It's just business." With that, he swung his sword, and the now-headless body of Thanos the Mad Titan slumped into the dirt, dead at last.

Satisfied with his success, Sephiroth walked over to where Thanos' head had rolled and pulled a small garbage bag out of his pocket. Xehanort had demanded proof that Thanos was dead, so as disgusting as it was, the psychopath's severed head would have to do. Holding the bag out from his body, he disappeared in a corridor of Darkness. He arrived back at the World That Never Was shortly afterwards, and handed the head off to Xehanort's time travelling incarnation to put into storage before heading off on his own in search of Cloud. When the rest of the galaxy heard the news of Thanos' sudden and mysterious death, celebrations broke out across Federation territory. Sure, some were worried about someone powerful enough to kill him, but right now, they were all simply glad to be rid of him.

* * *

 **Xehanort War explanation time, basically, Guardians of the Galaxy happened, only with the Galactic Federation from Lilo & Stitch instead of the Nova Corps. Nebula escaped and was recruited by Maleficent to scout for potential bases while The Collector is rebuilding his collection in the aftermath of the battle at Knowhere. The Kiln prison complex was irreparably corrupt, so once the galactic government found out, they cleaned out the bodies of the prisoners killed by Ronan and Nebula and set up a new prison elsewhere. **

**Next chapter: we pop in with the cast of American Dragon: Jake Long to see what they're up to after all these years.**


	19. Mark of the Huntsclan

**Major spoilers for The Xehanort War this chapter. This is one of those chapters where if you haven't read TXW this chapter's not going to make any sense to you whatsoever, so if you haven't read it yet, I suggest you go skim chapters 36-38 so I don't have to do a big info dump at the end of the chapter to explain the whole Unchained thing. This is going to be one of the longest chapters in this fic.**

 **The language spoken in the first part of the chapter is Atlantean (from Atlantis: The Lost Empire). I took the movie's explanation of Atlantean as the root of every modern language and ran with it to create the idea that everybody pre-Keyblade War spoke Atlantean.**

* * *

 **Episode 19: Mark of the Huntsclan:**

 **Paris, France – 6,000 B.C.**

 **8,002 Years before Birth By Sleep**

Fires raged throughout the city that would one day be known as Paris as warriors fought each other in the streets using large key-shaped swords. The Keyblade War had been raging on for two years now, and innocent civilians were quickly getting caught in the crossfire between the four major factions. Anguis fought for the light, and Leopardos for the darkness. Unicornis sought to maintain balance, while Ursus only sought power in and of itself. A few families of refugees made their way through the streets as explosions rang out all around them, seeking to flee the city as Keyblade Wielders fought and died on either side of the small path through the ruined buildings.

After hours of frantic and exhausted running, one of these families emerged into the plaza of the city chapel. The father breathed a sigh of relief as the church came within sight. Even the Keyblade Wielders aligned with the dark respected the neutrality of the church. None of them would dare attack civilians once they reached its territory. They just had to make it across the square to the church doors and declare sanctuary. But their joy, and the joy of the other families that emerged into the large square behind them, quickly turned to horror as several figures emerged from the shadows in front of them, cutting them off from their safe haven.

The adults in the group quickly began pleading for mercy and the children began to cry in fear as the mob of vampires, werewolves, trolls, hobgoblins, and even a few rogue centaurs closed in around them. With the guardians of light too busy fighting in the Keyblade War, the dark magical creatures of the world took advantage of the chaos to terrorize innocent civilians who didn't have Keyblade Wielders and other soldiers to protect them. The Dragons were too busy fighting off human persecution to stop the dark side of the magical community from having their fun with the humans.

The lead vampire was about to sink her teeth into one of the men in the group when a fireball emerged from a nearby alleyway and set her clothes on fire. The vampire screamed as she ran around the square in a blind panic. As she did, a swarm of warriors stormed out of the alleyway and into the square. They all wore the colors of different Keyblade Unions, but none of them were actually carrying Keyblades. With scythes and spears and daggers the warriors charged into the plaza and began launching spells at the attacking monsters.

The vampires were quickly staked through the heart by golden daggers, and the werewolves put to death on the blade of a pink scythe. A burst of green fire from the staff of one of the female warriors knocked the trolls on their backs, where other warriors quickly finished the lumbering behemoths off. The centaurs tried to gallop away, only be held back by Blizzaga spells and executed. The Hobgoblins were swiftly eliminated with swords. The whole affair lasted less than five minutes, and when the last of the attacking magical creatures fell, the crowd burst into applause.

 **"It's alright,"** the lead warrior, a pink haired man named Derax, said. **"We're going to take you somewhere the Unions and those _creatures_ can't reach. You'll be safe there."** As Derax and the other warriors did a head count, two of the female warriors in the group hung back to keep watch for any more attacks.

 **"Nice aim with your knives, Ophelia,"** one of them said. **"That was really impressive."**

 **"Thanks, Valerie,"** Ophelia replied. **"You weren't so bad yourself with that staff of yours."** The two women both had blonde hair, but that was the only thing they had in common. Ophelia had light green eyes and wore her hair in two pigtails, while Valerie had bright blue eyes and wore her hair in one long braid. Valerie went into battle with a healthy dose of pragmatism, whereas Ophelia had a tendency to get carried away in combat and could get a little sadistic at time. One of them had been part of the Leopardos Union, while the other came from Unicornis.

But despite their differences, both of them were united with the other warriors behind them by a common bond. Although they stopped fighting with their traditional weapons because of the stigma attached to them because of the war, all of them were Keyblade wielders, and all of them were Unchained. Everyone here had been a loner from their own Unions, until Forteller Ava of the Vulpeus union brought them all together and taught them how to Unchain themselves. To become immortal guardians of Light who would be reincarnated continuously every time they died.

All of the Unchained would have preferred to have Ava there leading them, but things would still be the same whether she was still alive or not. Tensions between the different Keyblade factions had been rising for the last several decades. Ava's murder at the hands of the Leopardos foreteller was simply the catalyst for the war that continued to rage all around them. The Unchained and Vulpeus troops were about to escort the civilians to safety when three new figures entered the plaza. Ophelia and Valerie whirled around in a battle stance, only to relax as they recognized the newcomers.

 **"I need to borrow some of your warriors, Derax,"** Ephemera called out, not even bothering with formalities. With Ava's death, Derax was effectively acting Foreteller of Vulpeus, but in accordance with his deceased superior's wishes, he kept the Union out of the war and focused on protecting the civilians. The Unchained had organized around Ephemera, one of Ava's closest confidants, into a guerilla movement seeking to bring down the Dark factions and avenge their leader's murder. Ephemera had been close friends with Ava before she died, and her death had left him bitter, cynical, and uncaring for ceremony and formalities.

Derax quickly instructed Ophelia, Valerie, and the other Unchained in the group to accompany the man for his next plan. Once the Unchained were at a safe distance, Derax called out for a "Gatekeeper," and the multicolor pillar of the Bifrost tore down from above, transporting the warriors and civilians to the refugee camps the Vulpeus Union had set up on Asgard with the approval of King Bor. When they were gone, Ephemera informed the Unchained warriors of their mission: they were going to launch a major attack against the Leopardos Forces camped out hundreds of miles to the east, in a city that would one day be known as London.

 **"Finally,"** Ophelia commented gleefully as the army marched out of the ruins of Paris. **"Time to gut those traitors like the snakes they are."** Shouts of agreement rose out from the Unchained assembled behind her. She and Valerie were highly ranked in the Vulpeus army, so they marched directly behind Ephemera and his lieutenants. But as the small group marched past block after block of the bodies of innocent men, women, and children caught in the crossfire between the Keyblade Unions and ripped apart by Vampires and Werewolves and Kingdom Hearts knew what else taking advantage of the chaos to have a free buffet.

 _We need to have a new faction for the sole purpose of protecting civilians against magical creatures who do them harm,_ she thought to herself as the group walked single file across a rickety wooden bridge leading over the river that flowed through the city. _Otherwise this will just keep happening again and again._

* * *

 **New York City – September 14, 2014**

 **10 Days before Re:Coded**

Rose gasped as she bolted upright in bed, sweat pouring from her body as she took deep breaths calm herself as the memories of her past lives raced through her mind. Memories of fighting in the Keyblade War. Of founding the Huntsclan to keep the excesses of the magical community in check. Of how the last eight thousand years had twisted the clan into a cult seeking to commit genocide against all magical creatures. And when she realized how far they had fallen and tried to undo the damage, her apprentice, the future Huntsmaster, had killed her, then taken her from her parents after her rebirth and raised her with the modern Huntsclan ideology in the hopes of erasing her misgivings.

She looked over at the clock, but the rush of memories already told her that it was past midnight on the morning of her twenty-first birthday. The day all Unchained regained the memories of their past lives, kept locked away in their minds until their new lives had re-matured enough to handle the memories without going insane. But the flood of images was starting to make her nauseous. She needed some water. So she slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Jake, and walked out into the hallway.

She and her boyfriend, Jake Long, had gotten this apartment together after they graduated from high school. Jake had already known by then what he wanted to study in college but Rose wasn't even sure what she wanted to study, and so had elected to take a gap year. Eventually, she'd found a job that she loved and never looked back. Her parents had been unusually accepting of her new job, but considering how easily they accepted the fact that her boyfriend was a shapeshifter who could turn into a fire breathing dragon and the two of them had been fighting trolls, hobgoblins, and other monsters at least once a week since they were thirteen, it wasn't that surprising.

As she walked into the kitchen, she flipped on a light-switch, only for her danger senses to start tingling when the light remained off. Under ordinary circumstances she would have just assumed the power was out. But these weren't ordinary circumstances. She was Unchained. And after eight thousand years, she recognized the telltale signs of an intruder when she saw them. Tiptoeing back out to the hallway, she quietly slipped her Hunts-staff out of the umbrella stand before returning to the kitchen and retrieving her gun from the locked drawer where she kept it for emergencies like this. Normally, she'd wake Jake up to help with something like this, but she had a pretty good idea of the reason for the late night break in.

With her weapons armed, she tiptoed through the apartment looking for signs of the intruder. She stepped out into the living room and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. In the blink of an eye she whirled around to find a lone figure dressed in black standing at the front of the hallway. In an instant Rose brought up her gun and aimed at the figure, who put up their hands in surrender. After she'd gotten the gun, she'd been practicing firing one-handed so she could wield both the gun and her Hunts-staff at the same time.

"Who's there?" She demanded firmly, her eyes narrowed as her stance stiffed in anticipation of a fight. If she was wrong, she needed to be ready to defend herself and her boyfriend if necessary. Fortunately (or unfortunately in hindsight), she was correct.

"An old friend," the figure, a woman, judging by the alarmingly familiar voice, answered back. Then to Rose's surprise, the intruder lifted her hands and pulled back her hood to reveal a familiar head of blonde hair that Rose hadn't seen in almost a thousand years. "It's good to see you, Valerie," Ophelia said warmly. Seeing her old friend, Rose visibly relaxed. But she didn't let down her guard. She and Ophelia may have been friends, but the last time they'd seen each other had been in 15th century Paris, and they hadn't parted ways on the best of terms. And considering what she'd done to the Huntsclan seven years ago…

"It's Rose now," she replied cautiously. "Considering how we parted ways back in Paris, should I be alarmed that you broke into my apartment in the middle of the night."

"Not at all, Rose," Ophelia replied. "I wish we hadn't parted under such bitter terms back then. That's why I wanted to come by and patch things up while you were alone. And I go be Lerena these days." Rose relaxed a little more, but refused to let down her guard. She knew how the other Unchained would feel about her life right now, and she needed to be ready to fight if things go ugly. She led her unexpected guest into the kitchen as they discussed recent developments in the world, Rose's new job, what Lerena had been up to since 1482.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Lerena asked after taking a sip of the water Rose had offered her.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked cautiously, having a sinking feeling in her stomach as to what her old friend meant.

"I mean all of this," the older woman replied as she gestured around the apartment. "You know how it goes for us. We're immortal, Rose. We stay the same but the world keeps on changing. That's why none of us ever put down roots or form attachments. You knew that, and yet here you are with a comfy apartment, a job, connections… You're dating a _dragon_ for Kingdom Hearts' sake! You and Ephemera were the ones who believed in not forming attachments. So what changed?"

"I realized I was wrong," Rose retorted in an angry whisper, not wanting to have to explain the complicated nature of the Unchained to Jake at 1:30 in the morning. "I realized that even if someone I care about grows old and dies, the time we spent together was still worth the pain of watching everyone I love die. And don't even dare criticize my boyfriend because he's a dragon. From what I heard, you're the one who dated a guy who's famous for writing violent porn.

"Oh please," Lerena quipped. "Everyone always inflates that story. Marquis was just a one-night stand. You've been dating that thing for eight years now, Rose. Wake up and see the light."

 **"Jake is not a thing,"** Rose replied calmly in the ancient Atlantean tongue that had once been spoke thousands of years ago, an angry fire raging in her eyes despite her neutral demeanor. "And if you make or imply a comment like that in front of either of us again," she added, switching back to English. "You'll be starting you're next life a lot sooner than you anticipated." Lerena's eyes narrowed at the blatant threat. "Now get the hell out of my apartment before I do something I'll regret." A look of resigned sorrow crossed over the other Unchained's face as she got up to leave.

"You're going to have to tell him you know," she warned her. "Now that your powers have awakened, you won't be able to hide them. Everyone else might buy a cover story of latent magical abilities that skipped a few generations, but he won't he's a dragon. He'll know you're lying. And when he finds out about your past, about what you've done, he won't even be able to look at you. I wish you could see reason, Rose, but if you want to wallow in the dregs of the world, that's your choice. But it may come back to bite you in the ass later on."

With that, Lerena opened the window in the living room and quietly snuck out onto the fire escape. Rose closed the window behind her, her fellow Unchained's words ringing in her ears. She didn't regret anything in her current life. She loved Jake and that had been what caused her to see again how far the Huntsclan had fallen, and now that her memories had returned, she questioned why she never noticed how cynical the Unchained in general had become sooner. She knew Jake loved her, but the one thing Lerena was right about was that she would have to tell him the truth about her past. And that scared her.

* * *

 **TXW Spoiler-filled explanation time:**

 **Keyblade War: for those who haven't played Kingdom Hearts X or Unchained X, the Keyblade wielders in the time of the Keyblade War are organized into 5 factions: Leopardos, Unicornis, Vulpeus, Anguis, and Ursus. The Fortellers are the leaders of each faction and the Keyblade Masters of the day. Ava is the only Foreteller whose real name is known. All other Foretellers are simply referred to as "the [faction name] Foreteller."**

 **Reincarnation and the Unchained: basically, everything with a heart in the KH universe is continually reincarnated. Kingdom Hearts is basically like a giant washing machine. Hearts go in, all the darkness gets cleaned out for a blank slate, and then gets regurgitated into a new body. What makes the Unchained so special is that they retain the memories of their past lives, while everybody else doesn't. This is just based on a really awesome and makes-so-much-sense-it-might-actually-be-true theory (which is the whole reincarnation idea) I found on KH Insider that I expanded upon (and came up with the idea of the Unchained).**

 **Lerena's comment about a "Marquis" is a reference to a one-panel gag in the Kingdom Hearts manga (in general, not confined to just KH1) that serves as a hint as to who Lerena is. She's someone KH fans have met before. If you want to guess, PM me, don't put it in a review. Virtual brownie points to those who figure it out. I'm not revealing who just yet. It's a spoiler, but that doesn't mean I can't give hints.**

 **Next Chapter: Rose worries about how to tell Jake she's an Unchained.**


	20. Memories of the Past

**As of this chapter we're now two thirds of the way through Ripple Effects, people. Only ten more chapters to go until we're done.**

* * *

 **Episode 20: Memories of the Past:**

 **New York City – September 15, 2014**

 **9 Days before Re:Coded**

Rose woke up eight hours later to the sound of the coffeemaker running in the kitchen. After Lerena's visit, she slept a lot more fitfully than she had before, her mind running through different ways to explain her past as an Unchained to Jake, and different possibilities for how he could react. Having figured out how she was going to tell him, she decided there was no point in putting it off any longer. She'd rather tell him while they were alone than when their families and friends came by for the party she suspected he was throwing for her later. For the time being, she wanted to keep things between the two of them.

"Morning, Jake," she greeted as she walked out into the kitchen, still in her pajamas. She smiled as she found her boyfriend trying to make breakfast in bed. Judging by the tray full of food, he'd succeeded, but had also left a big mess in the process if the sight of him wiping food off the ceiling with his tongue. Being able to shapeshift into a large fire breathing reptile certainly had its advantages.

"Happy birthday, Rose," he replied as he put down the towel and gave her a hug, quickly following it up with a kiss. "I made you breakfast."

"I can tell," she replied with a chuckle. But the smile faded from her lips as she realized that she needed to talk to Jake now before any of their friends arrived. It was Sunday, so their parents would naturally sleep in, but Trixie, Spud, and were coming over at 11. Jake picked up on her inner turmoil, and she could tell from the look on his face that it worried him.

"Rose, what's wrong?" he asked, concerned. "Is your stomach bothering you?"

"No," Rose answered quickly. "It's not that." She took a deep breath. _Here it goes,_ she told herself. "Jake, there's something I need to talk to you about." He asked what it was, and she told him that it would be better if they had this conversation sitting down. Once they sat down, she asked if he remembered the magical community's belief in reincarnation. Having spent six years as the guardian of the magical creatures living throughout the United States, Jake knew most of the traditions associated with all the different races, and reincarnation was one of the few things all the different groups believed in. When Jake responded that he remembered, Rose continued.

"What the magical community doesn't know," she explained, "is that there are individuals scattered all over the world who retain the memories of their past lives, effectively making them immortal. But when they're reincarnated, the memories of their previous lives are repressed until they turn twenty-one, when they're mature enough to handle the memories." She paused, nervous about how to proceed. How could she tell Jake that she was one of those individuals? That she had effectively been alive since before he was born and would (in spirit at least) keep living long after he was dead. To her surprise, he connected the dots pretty quickly.

"You're one of them, aren't you?" he asked. Despite her fears of the worst case scenario, Rose was relieved when she heard the warmth in his voice. She had no idea how he would feel about the rest of her history though.

"We called ourselves the Unchained," she replied. "We usually keep to ourselves and don't form attachments because of the pain of seeing the people we care about die, but after my last life, I realized that not interacting with people took the joy out of life." She looked up from the table she'd been staring at during her explanation to find Jake with a smile on his face as he pulled her in for a kiss.

"Finding out you were the Huntsgirl didn't change how I feel about you, Rose," he said warmly. "This doesn't change anything, either."

"But Jake," she went on. "Now that my memories have returned, the powers that come with it have too." The former American Dragon nodded in understanding as he realized what she meant. With her powers awakened, they needed to come up with a cover story to explain to anyone who found out about her powers. "And thousands of years ago," she added nervously, "I helped found the Huntsclan myself." Now Jake's expression was a mix of both shock, confusion, and surprisingly acceptance.

"What?" he gasped. Immediately Rose felt even more ashamed of what she'd done than when she'd realized how far the clan had fallen in the first place.

"Thousands of years ago," she explained. "There was a war going on between ancient civilization, and all the dark magical creatures like vampires, werewolves, trolls, and hobgoblins, were using the chaos to terrorize innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between the four major factions. My fellow Unchained and I were part of a neutral faction that evacuated refugees from the area around the battle. As the war went on, I and a few others in our group created a secret organization to protect normal humans from the dark side of the magical community by hunting the vampires, werewolves, and others that continued attacking humans."

"But over time, we became so consumed with our anger at the suffering they inflicted on innocent people that we became prejudiced against all magical creatures. We blamed them for the devastation caused by the war, and we sought to exterminate them all. But in my previous life, I saw what happened when the clan tried to interrogate your dad and I realized how far we had fallen. I tried to get everyone else to come to their senses, but they were too consumed with their hatred to realize what they'd become. The Huntsman we fought was my protégé, and when he realized that I doubted the cause, he killed me, then hunted me down in my next life so he could "condition the weakness out of me"."

"Rose," Jake replied calmly, snapping her out of her regrets. "That's not going to change anything. My feelings for you haven't changed. The whole Unchained thing will take some getting used to but I still love you, Rose. All the Huntsclan business is in the past. You don't have to prove that you realized how far they'd fallen. You already did that with the Aztec skulls back in middle school." He leaned over and kissed her again. Rose meantally sighed with relief. While she had been sure Jake would take the whole Unchained thing reasonably well, but she'd been nervous about how he'd handle the fact that she'd actually founded the Huntsclan.

But as they ate breakfast on the couch while they waited for Trixie and Spud to show up, she realized that she didn't want to keep going through the motions. As she looked down at the dragon shaped birthmark on her arm, she realized that she was tired of being constantly being reincarnated. The mark of the Huntsclan – no, the mark of the Unchained – was a constant reminder of her past and everything she'd done. She loved Jake and she didn't want to lose him the next time she died. The only way for an Unchained to lose their immortality had been destroyed in the final days of the Keyblade War.

But that didn't mean she couldn't find another way. As they finished their breakfast, she told Jake what she wanted to do. Look for every scrap of information on the Unchained she could find from any corner of the world. There had to be some knowledge of them that had survived to the modern day. That of course would necessitate bringing Jake's grandfather and Fu Dog in on the secret. But at least they could be trusted to keep a secret. An hour later, there was a knock at the door, and Jake opened it to find Trixie and Spud standing outside holding gifts for the birthday girl.

Rose smiled as her and Jake's friends wished her a happy birthday. She'd had enough of immortality, and one way or another, this would be her last cycle as an Unchained. Right now though, she was just going to enjoy spending her birthday with her boyfriend, friends, and family. But little did either of them realize that her status as an Unchained would have a much bigger impact than anyone realized.

* * *

 **This was pretty much the last early-2000's Disney show focused chapter in this fic. From here on out, it's going to be back to mainly Marvel-focused One-shots.**

 **Next chapter: we dive right into the middle of the modified Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 and see how things have changed with a stronger, more united S.H.I.E.L.D. (And with Skye's parents on the side of the angels)**


	21. What They Become

**9 more chapters left, ladies and gentlemen. There's going to be a lot more Marvel from here on out.**

* * *

 **Episode 21: What They Become:**

 **San Juan, Puerto Rico – April 12, 2015**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3**

Calvin Johnson smiled as he stalked towards Hydra head Daniel Whitehall. Once he'd learned the identity of the man responsible for butchering his wife twenty-five years ago, he had made it his goal to get close enough to Whitehall to exact his revenge. His knowledge of the Diviner helped him get worm his way into Whitehall's inner circle. He created a bullshit story about how his daughter had been stolen from him to fool Ward into bringing Daisy close enough to Whitehall so S.H.I.E.L.D. could wipe out the German scientist's branch of Hydra in a single strike.

The deluded psychopath's obsession with Daisy was creepy but predictable. When asked to retrieve Raina, who'd delivered Whitehalls' Diviner, an object the Inhumans used to trigger their transformations, to Jiaying as part of her plea deal with the elders of Lai Shi, from S.H.I.E.L.D. , he'd threatened to blow up the plane they were on if Daisy didn't come along. Thankfully, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents aboard the Bus escaped unharmed. Once Daisy was inside the abandoned theater where Whitehall had set up shop as he dug down into the Kree city beneath San Juan, she let loose with her powers, cutting down Hydra goons left and right.

Ward had attempted to bargain with her, but she'd silence him for good with a bullet in the head. That was one threat down, and nearly a hundred more to go. Coulson, Bobbi, FitzSimmons, and Mack had gone to the site of another shaft a few hours ago to inspect the structural integrity of the ancient city, only for Mack to become possessed by the city itself and used as a guardian. His fate was currently unknown, and Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter, Phil Coulson, and Melinda Garner had begun fighting their way through Hydra troops from the roof while Daisy and and her father worked their way through them from the inside.

In the year since the Hydra uprising, so much had changed for S.H.I.E.L.D. Simmons and Morse had gone undercover at a Hydra laboratory in Washington. Fitz had suffered brain damage from Ward dumping him and Simmons into the ocean the previous year. Coulson and his girlfriend Audrey had broken up. Lance Hunter had been recruited part-time at his ex-wife's recommendation. Isabelle Hartley and Idaho had been killed defending a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house when a Hydra-allied superhuman named Carl Creel raided it to retrieve the Diviner recovered from Whitehall's Hydra base in the 1940s.

While Whitehall attempted to experiment with samples of the Diviner to create a weapon, Coulson had been suffering hypergraphia attacks that compelled him to write out Kree symbols. After recovering his memories of the T.A.H.I.T.I. project to track down a patient who'd turned into a serial killer, he'd realized that the markings in his head were a map to the city. He'd consulted with Cal to learn the location of the temple and lead a team there to destroy it. But all of that was in the past. What mattered to Cal right now was making Dr. Whitehall suffer for what the man had done to his wife.

As Cal stalked down the hallway towards the seemingly ageless Nazi, Whitehall turned around and was about to when a hot rang out. Whitehall crumpled to the ground from a gunshot in the back. Cal stood there, stunned as he looked across the hall towards Deputy Director Phil Coulson.

"You're welcome," Phil said. "Sorry for the kill steal Cal, but walking towards Whitehall unarmed wasn't the best idea. It was either let you try and get your revenge on your own or keep Daisy's father alive. I figured the latter would be more important." Dr. Johnson's anger at the man dissipated as he realized that Coulson had a point. He sheepishly apologized for not thinking his revenge plan through, and Coulson offered to let him put a few extra bullets into Whitehall's corpse to blow of his anger.

Meanwhile Raina was making her way through the labyrinthine tunnels of the ancient Kree city, guided by the brainwashed agent Mackenzie. Daisy John followed behind in hot pursuit. Upon hearing that Daisy had gone into the tunnels, Antione Triplett raced through the maze deactivating the explosive charges he and FitzSimmons had set to ensure that his friend wouldn't be buried and killed. He raced into the temple in the center of the city just as the massive heavy doors slid into place. As he dusted himself off, he found Daisy facing down Raina with the Diviner on a pedestal in the center of the room.

"What are you doing here?" Daisy asked frantically. The Terrigen gas was harmless to normal humans but the metal of the Diviner metal was not.

"I came to get you," he replied as the last door sealed behind him. Once it did, the Diviner opened up, revealing a mass of blue crystals inside. "How do we stop it?" Trip asked.

"We can't," Daisy answered as she stepped forward, putting herself between her friend and the Diviner. As the crystals hovered over their metal contained, they emitted a large burst of gas. Since she had already gone through Terrigenesis years ago, the crystal gas had no effect on Daisy, and Trip was unharmed. But a cocoon of stone began to form around Raina. Unwilling to let Raina die (not that she would have but he didn't know that), Triplett fired his gun at the mass of crystals, shattering them and sending an explosion of gas and metal shards flying out from the pedestal.

Daisy shielded him with her body, protecting him from the Diviner metal. But a large chunk of it stabbed her in the back. Stunned by the pain, Daisy inadvertently let loose with her powers, triggering an earthquake that rocked the temple and the island above.

"What's causing this?" Agent Triplett asked as he helped Daisy stay upright.

"Me," she whispered back and she tried to stop the earthquake. Realizing that part of the ceiling might collapse on top of them, and Trip got on the ground and she stood above him, ready to deflect any debris with her powers. Across the room, Raina's sealed cocoon began to crack open revealing her transformation. Yellow eyes, clawed hands, and sharp thorns peaked out through the crumbling stone as the Kree city cracked and crumbled around them.

* * *

 **So yeah, Ward is dead. Since his canon death doesn't happen in this fic, I decided to move it forward to during the first half of Season 2. Don't get me wrong, he's a fantastic villain, but he's a hate sink, and I don't want him to still be alive during the Acolytes of Chaos story, so I decided to kill him off now so I wouldn't have to do it later.**

 **Other changes to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2:**

 **-Agent 33 never got captured and brainwashed by Hydra, so no Ward/33 pairing in this universe.**

 **Next chapter: With Trip still alive, the aftermath of the battle for the Kree Temple turns out a lot differently than in canon.**


	22. Aftershocks

**8 more chapters to go. Some dialogue from last chapter was take from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode What They Become. Some dialogue from this chapter comes from the episode Aftershocks. Since this chapter doesn't twist from canon as much, it's going to be a little shorter.**

* * *

 **Episode 22: Aftershocks:**

 **The Playground – April 13, 2015**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3**

Daisy sighed as she sat through the tedious process of being evaluated for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Index for super powered individuals. Her actions in Puerto Rico had exposed her powers to the rest of the team, but they'd all accepted it. Mostly. Mack was still angry about his experience being possessed by the Kree City, but he still trusted her. Coulson and Hill putting him in charge of handling all alien artifacts probably helped him cool down a little bit. Of course, none of them knew that Skye's powers came from the same source as Raina's though.

After Raina's transformation in the underground temple, she'd managed to escape the compound, killing several S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists sent to clean up the debris and help Simmons destroy the temple in the process. Gordon had picked her up as soon as she got above ground and taken her to Lai Shi. While Daisy would have preferred Raina be put in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody for her crimes, she knew that Raina could expose the existence of the Inhumans and that was something that couldn't be allowed.

Right now Coulson, May, Mack, Triplet, Bobbi, and Hunter were out launching a counterattack against Hydra as part of a plan to eliminate their leadership in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, she, Simmons, and Fitz were stuck back at HQ getting her indexed while May's husband Andrew did a psychiatric evaluation. Simmons was a little rattled by her experiences with the Kree city, particularly what happened to Mack, but eventually she came around and accepted Daisy's powers. The scientists was intensely curious about where they came from, and Daisy wasn't sure how long she could avoid her questions to think of a cover story.

She was glad at least her friends were fine with her powers, if a little upset that she kept them a secret for so long. Other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents weren't as forgiving about it, however. Agents Gonazles and Weaver had a very hardline stance towards superhumans, and no amount of good deeds were going to change their minds. At least they hadn't figured out about Lai Shi yet. Her thoughts returned to the present as Simmons came in to the quarantine room to let Skye know that everything was done and she was clear to leave.

* * *

 **Octavian Bloom's Mansion – April 13, 2015**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3**

"No more waiting," Hunter said happily as he and Bobbi ducked down in the front seat of the SUV they'd used to bring Sunil Bakshi, Dr. Whitehall's second-in-command, to this place as part of their plan. While transporting Bakshi to a nearby army base to hand him over to the custody of the U.S. military, they staged an attack that appeared to be a rescue mission for Bakshi, faking Coulson and May's deaths in the process. From there, Hunter pretended to be a mercenary working for the other Hydra leaders who were allegedly attempting a power play, and drove Bakshi to the mansion of high ranking Hydra leader Octavian Bloom.

From there, Bakshi would relay the other leaders' failed attempt at a power play. Bloom would immediately order the assassination of the remaining heads of Hydra (except for Baron Von Strucker in Eastern Europe, but Nick Fury and Deathlok were gathering intel on him for the next phase of the war against Hydra), after which point Hunter and Bobbi would break into the mansion, kill Bloom, and recapture Bakshi. Relieved to finally get to the best part of the plan, Hunter reached up and tapped a button on the central console monitor that activated a row of miniguns on the sides of the car that killed the Hydra agents surrounding them.

Smirking, Hunter put the van in drive and smashed through the front gate of the mansion, knocking one of them off its hinges. They quickly made their way through the mansion until they found Bakshi, Bloom, and a handful of guards. Bobbi quickly crossed off the guards while Hunter killed Bloom with a bullet to the head.

"Coulson," Bakshi gasped as he realized that he'd been played.

"He knows you too well," Hunter replied.

"He couldn't get to us," Bakshi continued as the pieces of Coulson and Hill's plan put themselves together in his mind. "So he had us slaughter each other."

"And fortunately for you," Hunter added. "We already promised you to Talbot."

"So you're perfectly safe," Bobbi finished as she led the shivering, shaken Bakshi out of the room. Hunter looked at the dead Hydra leaders in the room and smiled in satisfaction as he walked out towards the car. After spending the year after Hydra's uprising in a cold war with the terrorist organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. had finally managed to cripple Hydra the way it had crippled them. With the remaining Hydra facilities in North America being raided in the aftermath of the assassination of its leaders, the forces of good were emerging victorious.

The Avengers were busy taking down Hydra bases in Africa while (unknown to the world), members of S.A.C.K. were secretly helping to dismantle Hydra bases throughout Asia. Within the next five months, Hydra's numbers would steadily decline. S.H.I.E.L.D. had finally recovered from its near-collapse the previous year, and emerged better than ever.

* * *

 **So for the most part, the first half of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 is largely the same as in canon, but with a few alterations because of AU stuff that happened earlier in the fic. But since Gonzales' "Real Shield" faction doesn't exist in this universe, things get drastically more different after next chapter.**

 **Next chapter: Sif and Vin-tak's visits to Earth have a much different outcome.**


	23. Who You Really Are

**7 more chapters. As the title indicates, this chapter is mostly based on the Agents of S.H.I. . episode "Who You Really Are," so there will be dialogue borrowed from there throughout the chapter.**

* * *

 **Episode 23: Who You Really Are:**

 **The Playground – April 16,** **2015**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3.**

"It's possible that only he can operate it," Bobbi suggested as she, Coulson, Daisy, and Mack walked into the Playground. "We've seen other alien materials that react to biology and DNA." While Director Hill was off inspecting another S.H.I.E.L.D. Installation in East Africa, they'd found that Lady Sif had arrived on Earth. Only she'd lost all her memories, and a few hours before her memory loss she was spotted fighting a man they now knew to be a disguised member of an alien race called Kree. The Kree, Vin-Tak, claimed that he was here to help, and that he'd only taken Sif's memories with his high-tech truncheon to keep her from tracking him.

They'd found him digging up a crate in Chaves, Portugal, and currently had him locked up on board the Bus. While Sif and Coulson interrogated him on the flight back to the Playground, Bobbi and Hunter examined his truncheon to figure out how it worked. Fitz and Simmons were examining the case he'd dug up, and Coulson told the team that if it worked they may finally get the answers about the alien carvings in his head that they'd been looking for.

Of course, Coulson, May, and Daisy knew a lot more about them than everyone else. As soon as Coulson started carving the map to the city, Daisy had shown the carvings to her Rising Tide contacts and to her mother. Jiaying had been able to identify the carvings as part of a map, to a Kree city, but unfortunately its location had been lost to history. An hour later, Sif, Coulson, Daisy, and May stood in the common room of the base interrogating Vin-Tak about how his truncheon worked.

"Tell us how the weapon works, Kree," Sif demanded. She was still angry with him for erasing her memory and eager to have it restored.

"The Kree has a name," Vin-Tak retorted. "And that only works when in my hand." He gestured to the truncheon being held by Coulson.

"That's convenient," Agent May commented dryly.

"It has a dial on the bottom," Vin-Tak explained. Then before anyone could react, he kicked the weapon out Coulson's hands, grabbed it, and jabbed at Lady Sif. Everyone else in the room pointed their guns at him. "Sorry," he added as he put his hands above his head. "The argument was going nowhere." But true to his word, the truncheon restored Lad Sif's memories, and she promptly took out her anger by punching Vin-Tak in the face.

"Asgardian," he groaned as he stood up. "That explains a lot."

"It is true," Sif replied. "We do not like or trust Kree. That is why I am here. When Heimdall saw that one landed on your world, Odin charged me with retrieving him."

"So you came to pick a fight," the Kree said in frustration.

"We know enough about Kree history to be concerned," the Asgardian warrior retorted angrily.

"Well if you know Kree history perhaps you've heard the tale of Terigenesis?" he asked calmly. Daisy, Coulson, and May looked at Vin-Tak in barely-concealed alarm as Sif spoke.

"Of course," she answered. "Ancient Kree descending on planets, altering the inhabitants to fight their war."

"And Earth was one of them," Vin-Tak answered. Coulson, Daisy, and May already knew all of this, but the fact that Asgard knew meant that Thor or Sif could inadvertently expose the Inhuman population on Earth. Coulson and May knew how much Daisy's people valued their secrecy, and wanted to avoid triggering a conflict between humans and Inhumans as much as possible. As this confrontation was taking place, Fitz and Simmons had broken open the case to discover that all of the Diviners inside had been removed.

"Eons ago, the Kree waged a very long war," Sif went on. "Casualties were high, and they needed more soldiers."

"You mean cannon fodder," May objected bitterly.

"We needed killers," the blue man interjected angrily. "One vicious faction among the Kree genetically modified other creatures' DNA. These modifications can be activated with Terigen crystals."

"And we know those torturous experiments failed," Sif replied.

"Not on Earth," the Kree explained. "Here we had to shut them down." Coulson, Daisy, and May all looked at each other, waiting to see how Sif would react. "This faction had built a city," the blue-skinned alien went on. "Brought with them the Diviners which hold the Crystals. Their plans were discovered, and thwarted by the better of my kind, putting an end to that dark chapter of our past."

"Until now," Skye said as she realized that Raina undergoing Terigenesis in the city had alerted the Kree to the existence of Inhumans on Earth. Vin-Tak explained how he had detected an ancient signal indicating the activation of the temple inside the Kree city, and had come to Earth to eliminate any transformed humans on Earth before the Kree Empire learned of their existence in order to prevent the experiments from being renewed. Daisy kept her cool as Sif asked her about Raina's transformation, trying not to be offended when the Kree referred to her people as abominations.

Daisy described what she'd seen of Rain's transformation: the claws, the eyes, and the thorns. When Vin-Tak asked whether there were others with Raina in the temple and repeated his blanket statement that the Inhumans were weapons and abominations, Daisy finally had enough.

"Just because we're not fully human doesn't mean we're abominations," she snapped angrily, shaking the room as she spoke. Vin-Tak and Sif stared at her in shock as understanding dawned on their faces. Sif requested to take her back to Asgard for her own safety, and Coulson refused.

"The weapon has been activated," Vin-Tak retorted angrily. "It needs to be eliminated before it hurts someone."

"I've had my powers since I was fourteen, jackass," Daisy retorted. "And I haven't hurt anyone. Sorry for shaking the room, but that's what happens when someone calls me an abomination to my face." At this statement, Sif nodded in understanding and moved to stand with the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents against the Kree interloper. If the girl had only recently acquired her powers she would have expressed concern at the danger she posed to herself and others, but since she'd been controlling them for years and the current tremors were merely the result of stress and anger at the Kree's words, there was nothing to worry about.

"But… that means that there are others," Vin-Tak realized. "How could you have gone through the transformation without the temple? Or the Diviner?"

"Sorry," Daisy replied angrily. "Family secret. And you're not family." Since there was no way she could stop the shaking of the building when she was stressed out, May escorted Daisy out of the room to find a quiet place for her to calm down and stop the tremors. Back in the common room, Sif and Coulson held off Vin-Tak while Coulson ordered over the radio to deliver Bambino (Coulson's nickname for the laser canon he'd used against Loki before the Battle of New York).

"The Kree's trying to take Daisy away," Fitz told Bobbi and Mack as he raced through the corridors of the Playground to the armory. As he ran past them, the two agents raced towards the common room to help. As this was happening, Lady Sif faced off against Vin-Tak in hand to hand combat while Coulson tried to back out of the room. But before he could clear the threshold, Vin-Tak grabbed Coulson and threw him to the other side of the room. As Lady Sif rushed over to make sure he was alright, the Kree scout marched out into the hallway in search of Daisy. As he raced through the halls, he came across Bobbi and Mack, and the duo refused to stand aside.

"Maybe we should call in some real backup," Bobbi said as Mack punched the blue-skinned interloper in the face. As she finished saying this, Hunter rounded the corner right as Vin-Tak punched Mack across the hallway. Eager to defend his no-longer-ex girlfriend (they had mended fences and were in a relationship again, even if they weren't ready to tie the knot again), the former mercenary rushed up and engaged the Kree in hand to hand combat. Unfortunately, he was quickly thrown against the wall, but Bobbi pulled out her battle staves and joined the fight.

As the battle went on, Daisy got her emotions under control and the base stopped shaking. While this was happening, Bobbi kept Vin-Tak busy long enough for Fitz to get in a clear shot with Bambino, stunning the alien long enough for Bobbi to trick him into wiping his memories with his own high-tech hammer. It was finally over. The next morning, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Asgardian, and Kree drove out to a nearby field so that Sif could return Vin-Tak to his home planet.

Before calling for Heimdall to open the Bifrost, Sif discussed with Coulson and May the possibility of her joining S.H.I.E.L.D. full time as an emissary from Asgard. Both of them answered that they would welcome all the assistance they could get. Once the two aliens had left Earth, Coulson, Johnson, and May returned to their base. Since nobody on their team outside the three of them had heard Vin-Tak's explanation of the Kree experiments, they were going to keep it that way unless the Inhumans were ever exposed. In the meantime, they had bigger problems. Baron Von Strucker and his associated remained at large, and even with the Avengers' help, it fell to them to flush the remaining Hydra forces out into the light.

* * *

 **I always enjoy Sif's appearances on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I thought that her joining the agency would be an interesting evolution of her role, where she might become a recurring cast member instead of just showing up for one episode each season.**

 **The reason that Rinoa and other characters who are S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in this fic haven't shown up in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. chapters lately is because they'reall working at different bases. While we only see the Playground on the show, in this universe S.H.I.E.L.D. has more bases than that, so there's going to be different teams at different bases.**

 **And to be clear, it's really Odin in this continuity, not Loki-disguised-as-Odin. Loki' still in his prison cell and has been there ever since the Avengers. Since Thor: The Dark World never happened, he never got let out to help stop Malekith.**

 **And just to clear up one thing people are probably wondering why Coulson, May, and the others who are part of the S.A.C.K. don't share the extra info with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers, it's because they can't talk about that information without having to say where they got it from, which would lead to having to expose the existence of the S.A.C.K., which is supposed to be a secret society whose membership is based on contact with and knowledge of Keyblade Wielders. So to keep S.A.C.K. a secret, they have to find other ways to point the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the direction of that info.**

 **Coming up next: the Avengers take the fight to Hydra in Sokovia. It's the only part of Age of Ultron that's canon in this story.**


	24. Battle of Sokovia

**6 more chapters to go, everyone. We're 80% of the way through the fic, and it's time to check back in with the Avengers. Since the rest of Age of Ultron isn't going to be happening, this chapter's going to change the canon outcome of the battle significantly.**

* * *

 **Episode 24: Battle of Sokovia:**

 **Sokovia – April 29** **,** **2015**

 **3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3**

"Report to your stations immediately," Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker's voice ordered over the castle intercom. "This is not a drill. We are under attack. We are under attack" This castle in Sokovia was HYDRA's last major stronghold, and was currently under siege by the accursed Avengers. As Hydra soldiers raced through the castle corridors arming themselves for battle, Pietro Maximov looked at his sister Wanda and nodded. It was time. Meanwhile, outside explosions rocked the snowy mountainside as the battle raged on.

Black Widow drove a commandeered truck along the mountain roads while Hawkeye fired arrows at distant targets, from Hydra goons to tanks. When a HYDRA truck pulled alongside, the gunner on top was swiftly taken out with a blow from Thor's hammer. The Prince of Asgard then flew up to a nearby sentry tower, where he dispatched the HYDRA goons on it with his bare hands. Meanwhile Captain America rode his motorcycle through the chaos of the battle, weaving through laser blast as he toppled evil henchmen with shield, fist, and the bike itself. As this was happening, the Hulk tore through tanks and turrets like they were made of paper while Iron Man attempted to attack the castle, only to be knocked back by a force field.

Coulson had told them about this place after he and his team had raided a HYDRA base in the arctic the other day. The team was still mad about his resurrection being kept from them, but they understood S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reasons for doing so. Speaking of S.H.I.E.L.D., they were currently on standby with the original Helicarrier, ready to evacuate civilians if need be. The people of Sokovia weren't the biggest fans of the Avengers, but since Kim and Ron had helped the people there before joining the team, the group's presence was at least tolerated.

"Shit," Tony cursed as he made contact with the force field. As he circled the castle looking for another angle of attack, War Machine and Falcon made another strafing run on the battlefield, keeping up the aerial attacks while Stark was busy.

"Language," Steve chided as he asked J.A.R.V.I.S. what the view from above looked like.

"The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield," the A.I. reported, looking down from the reconnaissance satellite Stark had built to monitor battles such as this. "Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken."

"Loki's scepter must be here," Thor stated as he swung his hammer at another swarm of HYDRA goons. It had been taken by S.H.I.E.L.D. for study after the Battle of New York, only to fall into Hydra's hands shortly after, and ever since they'd been conducting experiments in an attempt to give people superpowers. "Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it," he added. "At long last." At long last Hydra was about to be defeated, their schemes thwarted for good. Sure, some HYDRA minions would escape, but with all of their leadership either dead or imprisoned, the terrorist organization would collapse, leaving its remaining operatives easy pickings for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers to clean up.

"At long last is lasting a little long, boys," Black Widow quipped as she and Kim Possible fought their way through HYDRA soldiers with martial arts, guns, and grenades.

"Yeah," Hawkeye agreed as he and Ron dodged fire from a laser turret. "I think we lost the element of surprise."

"Wait a second," Stark interjected as he fired a stream of repulsor blasts at henchmen reaching up the stairs in the courtyard of one of the outer buildings.. "Is no one else going to deal with the fact that Cap just said "language"?"

"I know," Rogers replied in resignation while he hurled his bike into the front of an approaching HYDRA truck. "It just slipped out. J.A.R.V.I.S, any word?"

"Negative, Captain," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered. "There has been no word from Sergeant BarnEs since he entered the facility." Bucky's undercover infiltrations of Hydra bases had been extremely successful. The last, he'd been ingratiating himself into Strucker's castle. Steve enjoyed being back in the action alongside his best friend, but for now at least, it couldn't last. Once HYDRA was defeated, Bucky was going to turn himself over to the American military and stand trial for the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier.

Inside the citadel, the man himself moved like a ghost as he stalked through the corridors in search of the Twins. Shortly after meeting them, he'd convinced them to betray HYDRA by explaining how the three of them were nothing but tools to them. All it had taken was an explanation of his past to make his point and they were jumping to switch sides. They weren't sure about joining the Avengers just yet, but they'd been working to covertly undermine HYDRA without blowing their cover.

He when he caught up to them, he removed his mask and nodded. The Avengers had left Strucker distracted. Now was the time for them to strike. As they planned, Quicksilver raced down to the armory and blew it up with a grenade. Wanda went down to the room controlling the force field generator while Bucky pulled out his guns and tore through the HYDRA forces inside the base. Once the field dropped a few minutes later, Bucky turned on his comlink and contacted the Avengers, letting them know that the base defenses were down.

A few hours later, the battle was won. Dr. List was dead. Bucky shot him through the heart. Baron Von Strucker and the remaining Hydra forces were taken into custody by NATO. The scepter was back in the hands of the good guys, and Thor would be taking it with him when he returned to Asgard in three days. Despite their reticence towards the Avnegers, the Maximov twins were welcomed and congratulated with open arms. Tony Stark cleared the air with the twins by explaining that his mentor, Obadiah Stane, had been the one selling Stark weapons to the terrorists who'd attacked their home years ago.

Bucky wanted to turn himself in immediately after the battle, but Steve and the rest of the team convinced him to wait until after the victory party they were hosting the night before Thor went back to Asgard. In the days before the party, the team did some philanthropic work in Sokovia at Wanda and Pietro's request to help making things a little better for the people. A few days later, everyone on the team said goodbye to Thor before he went back to Asgard, bringing Jane along so he could finally give her the tour of the Nine Realms he promised her once he dropped the Scepter off.

* * *

 **So yeah, that's about it as far as the Avengers stuff goes for now. Ultron doesn't happen, Vision doesn't happen, Thanos grabbing an Infinity Gauntlet doesn't happen… Ant-Man still happens, I'm just not going to cover it since, end-credit scene aside, it's the exact same as in canon, so I'm not going to bother rehashing something most of you have probably already seen. Same goes for the "Asgardians deliver Infinity Stone" to the Collector scene from Thor: The Dark World. It's been moved up to after the party from Age of Ultron and with a different stone, but I've got more interesting things to cover.**

 **We're going to go back to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast for a couple chapters, and this time we'll see more of the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents outside of Team Coulson now that most of Hydra has been (seemingly) defeated. After that we're going to jump ahead and see how Bucky's trial/court martial turns out.**

 **Next chapter: the Inhumans of Lai Shi are exposed to S.H.I.E.L.D., and Daisy has to pick a negotiator who can be impartial without starting a war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Lai Shi.**


	25. Scars

**5 more chapters to go, people. This chapter and the next one are going to be a little on the short side. Chapter title and Gonazles' lines all come from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 episode Scars.**

* * *

 **Episode 25: Scars:**

 **The Playground– May 8, 2015**

 **2 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3**

"Agent Weaver, you and Lady Sif be with Coulson on QJ 36," Director Hill explained to the group of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents gathered in her office going over their plan for first contact with Lai Shi. Raina and another Inhuman had infiltrated the Iliad the previous day, going after the monolith in its cargo hold. Between their infiltration and rescuing Lincoln from an Arctic Hydra base (that had allowed them to give the Avengers the coordinates to Von Strucker's Sokovian fortress in the first place), the existence of Inhumans was now officially exposed. Daisy had gone back to Lai Shi to meet with her mother while S.H.I.E.L.D. prepared its negotiating party.

"We'll land a good distance from their main buildings here," Hill added as she pointed at the landing site on the map displayed on the massive wall-mounted computer screen. "Then Coulson will go in first, alone and unarmed."

"Coulson shouldn't be the one going in," Commander Gonzales interject from his seat next to the desk. With the threat of Hydra largely defeated, most of the high ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel had gathered at The Playground for this strategy meeting. With the (perceived) potential threat posed by the Inhumans, they needed all hands on deck.

"Care to elaborate?" Coulson asked curiously.

"You're too close to this," Gonzales went on. "Agent Johnson is your protégé. She's like a daughter to you, and her mother is these people's leader."

"I'm banking on that personal connection to get everyone through this safely," the deputy-director replied. "

"You shouldn't be," the commander of the Iliad retorted. "This is one of the greatest threats S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ever faced. A whole race of people with powers, and you can't be trusted to be objective with Agent Johnson."

"Got any evidence to back that up commander?" Shego objected sarcastically. "You're not exactly a sterling example of objectivity towards superhumans yourself."

"I agree with Agent Go," Lady Sif commented. "From what Daisy has told us, the Inhumans are wary of organizations like the S.H.I.E.L.D. Commander Gonazles' prejudice against those with powers may very well exacerbate their wariness into open hostility. Sending a negotiator with a personal connection to their leader will help to ensure that the meeting proceeds smoothly without instigating a diplomatic incident." Agents Weaver and Oliver, who were close friends with the commander, nodded their heads as they silently conceded that the Asgardian agent had a point.

An hour later, the three Quinjets took off from the Playground's main hangar, headed for Lai Shi. Coulson, Weaver, Kara, and Sif were in one. Simmons, May, Bobbi, and some scientists were in another. And Shego, Rinoa, Drakken, and some field agents were in the last one in case things went south. An hour later, they touched down in a field near the settlement and disembarked. The eyeless Inhuman who'd boarded the Iliad with Raina met them on the outskirts of the compound and led them inside. The remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents waited on the edge of Afterlire for orders from Coulson on their next move.

"Phil," Jiaying greeted warmly as Gordon led the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent into her office. "How are you?" Daisy and Cal greeted him as well before heading outside so the negotiations could begin.

"I'm doing fine," he replied. "I'm sorry things had to happen the way they did."

"After Daisy was taken from me I knew we wouldn't be able to hide forever," she admitted. "But I was hoping that we'd be able to negotiate a deal."

"To avoid placing the entire population of Lai Shi on the index," he surmised. "I understand. We were forced to add Daisy and Lincoln to the Index per protocol. We're required to put S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with powers on the index, but I think we can work out an arrangement that keeps Afterlife off the radar while giving S.H.I.E.L.D. the peace of mind that the bad eggs can be monitored and tracked."

"That would be great," Daisy's mother said. "Since we already employ a strict screening of Inhuman descendants to determine their worthiness to go through the Mist, we can simply have an agreement with S.H.I.E.L.D. that they leave us alone and in return we notify them whenever someone like Eva Belyakov goes rogue."

"Sounds perfect," Coulson answered. With their agreement quickly reached, they took a few minutes to catch up on recent events in both Afterlife and the world at large. Afterwords, the two negotiators left the room. Coulson to explain the agreement to the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. and have a treaty typed up, and Jiaying to ease her people's fears of being rounded up by S.H.I.E.L.D. and assure them that, while the community would have to migrate to a new location to maintain their secrecy, S.H.I.E.L.D. would not be coming after them.

Once Lai Shi had been cleared out, Jiaying and Cal went back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters to formally sign the treaty and ensure that the rest of the agency held up their end of the bargain. To their satisfaction, Coulson's agreement was upheld by the other agents, even if some such as Commander Gonzales openly voiced their displeasure. Nevertheless, Daisy Johnson breathed a sigh of relieve as she saw her parents off that afternoon. War had been averted, and she hadn't been forced to choose between her Inhuman heritage and her friends at S.H.I.E.L.D. Now that S.H.I.E.L.D. was no longer concerned about the Inhumans, they could focus on more important matters, like keeping watch for remnants of Hydra or the emergence of new nascent supervillains.

* * *

 **So that's almost it for the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Chapters. I had things end differently with Skye's mom because in the over Acolytes of Chaos story, the "Terrigen crystals spilled into the ocean" thing at the end of AOS season 2 doesn't happen, so the Inhuman population is much lower.**

 **Next chapter: With war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans averted, Fitz finally works up the courage to ask Simmons out on a date. Too bad the Monolith has other ideas.**


	26. SOS

**4 More chapters to go. Chapter title and some dialogue comes from the Agents of S.H.I. . Season 2 finale S.O.S. Just a head's up, this is going to be a** ** _very_** **short chapter. Probably the shortest one in the entire fic.**

* * *

 **Episode 26: S.O.S.:**

 **The Playground – May 16, 2015**

 **2 Months before KH3**

"No, I don't," Simmons protested as she and Fitz stood next to the thick glass container holding the ancient Kree monolith. "You keep rambling on and on and I still don't know what you mean." It had been a week since the meeting with the Inhumans and things had more or less settled down at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. May was taking a vacation with her husband and daughter while Daisy was talking to Coulson and Director Hill about creating an elite unit of superpowered humans. Daisy wanted to show other Inhumans that they didn't have to hide from the world, and that they could make a difference.

Director Hill had approved the project, so far codenamed "Project Caterpillar," and Agent Shego ended up being the first recruit. It turned out that the rainbow colored comet that gave her and her four brothers their powers had contained traces of Terigen crystals in the rocks. She had passed this bit of information on to her brothers, who later met with Jiaying so she could update her records of Inhuman genealogy, and Team Go was quickly sworn to secrecy on their Inhuman heritage. Since they were operating out in the public they were already on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar, and the last thing the Inhuman community needed was for a team of superheroes to expose them to the world.

"Dinner," Fitz said again, interrupting Simmons' train of thought.

"Fast approaching, yes," Simmons replied impatiently, not understanding where her lab partner was going with this discussion. "And we'll all eat it. I'm sure."

"Yeah, I know," Fitz interrupted. "But, me and you. Maybe we could eat somewhere else. You know. Somewhere… nice." His confession of his feelings for her in the ocean the previous year had been a long undiscussed elephant in the room between the two of them, exacerbated by his brain damage (which he had largely recovered from by this point). Simmons turned to look at him as she realized that he was trying to ask her out on a date.

"Oh," she said in surprise before nodding in agreement. In his excitement, Fitz's hand slid down the casing of the Monolith's container before he left to go research some options for dinner nearby. Simmons smiled as she placed another piece of equipment off the table. Deep down, she realized that she liked Fitz too, but she was afraid of admitting it due to the shared occupational hazards of being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and the fear that they might not work out as a couple. Nevertheless, she was excited to see how their first "date" went.

As she looked up from her work station, she noticed that the door to the Monolith's case was slightly ajar. _Fitz must have accidentally unlocked it when he almost fell,_ she realized as she stood up to close it. But before she could react, the gargantuan stone suddenly liquefied and flowed out of the container. Simmons barely had time to scream as the grey goo washed over her before sucking her back inside the container as the monolith solidified once more, leaving no trace of Simmons in the room.

* * *

 **So yeah, Shego and the rest of Team Go are Inhumans. I was debating how to explain the origin of their superpowers in relation to the Inhumans when I realized that having the source of their powers be tied to Terigenesis would make things much simpler in regards to the overall universe.**

 **Now that this is out of the way, there's going to be one last Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D centric chapter in this fic. If you've read The Xehanort War, you know what'll happen in that chapter. ;) Expect lots of FitzSimmons feels in chapter 28. And a lot of bombshell reveals that put a lot of things into context.**

 **Next Chapter: After the lengthy proceedings of a court martial, Buck Barnes finally receives a verdict for his actions as the Winter Soldier.**


	27. Moving On

**3 more chapters to go, my ever faithful readers. We're back for another Avengers chapter and I promise that this one is longer.**

* * *

 **Episode 27: Moving On:**

 **New York City – June 30, 2015**

 **1 Day before Kingdom Hearts 3**

"Congratulations, Bucky," Steve said happily as the two friends rode back to Avengers Tower in Stark's limousine. The court martial was over, and he'd been cleared of all charges on the grounds that, since he'd been brainwashed and tortured to the point where he could no longer remember his own name, his actions as the Winter Soldier were not committed of his own free will. The media had been in an uproar during the trial, but the anger was directed not at him, but at HYDRA for turning one of America's legendary Howling Commandos into a mindless killing machine. With the entire proceedings finished, Tony had decided to host a party in Bucky's honor at the tower that night, and had sent the limousine to pick the two super soldiers up.

They arrived on the Tower's communal floor an hour later to find the multi-level room decked out with lavish looking streamers and silver-colored balloons. Almost all of the Avengers (and associated friends and significant others) were there, each dressed in the finest clothes that their (or in some cases Tony's) money could buy. Barton had been unable to attend because his was busy remodeling his homestead for the millionth time and wanted to finish before his and Laura's anniversary next month. Bruce and Betty had just gotten married last month and hadn't come back from their honeymoon. But other than that, the entire team was assembled in the tower common room.

Celebratory champagne and hors d'oeuvres circulated the room as the welcome home party kicked into gear. After shaking off the last of his Hydra brainwashing Bucky had adjusted reasonably well to the modern world. He hadn't exactly had time to keep up with the times any more than was strictly necessary for his missions since he'd spend the last seven decades as a mindless instrument of death. He had a lot more things to catch up on that Steve did, but he was taking it all in stride. While most of the Avengers were busy chatting, Bucky decided to grab himself another glass of champagne.

"So," the Winter Soldier said as he walked up to the bar. "When do I get to meet my sister in law?" he nodded his head towards the ring on his friend's finger. He smirked as Steve turned around in surprise. After spending seventy years as a sniper, he had become very good at spotting small details. Like the wedding ring Steve wore whenever he wasn't in uniform. The two super soldiers had been brothers in all but blood even before the War, and not even the decades Bucky had spent as the Winter Soldier had changed that. Their bond had stood the test of both time and HYDRA brainwashing.

"She's out of town on a business trip," Captain America answered, smirking back. He and Bucky teased each other at every opportunity. "I'm taking her out to dinner when she gets home tomorrow. Maybe you can show up at the same restaurant during our date and invite yourself to the table." The two men laughed as the party continued around them. Bucky was about to offer a witty retort when Stark called the two of them over for a team photo. With a mock sigh, the super soldiers walked up towards the upper level of the room to join the rest of the team in cramming into a small space for a photo.

Tony and Pepper were in the center of the group. Thor and Jane stood one stair above them, with Wanda and her extravagantly elaborate red dress hovering in the air above both couples. Kim, Steve, Pietro, and Rhodey ended up on one side of the photo, while Sam, Ron, Natasha, and Bucky wound up on the other. Once the Avengers photo was taken, the superheroes cleared away from the central space to make room for the surviving members of the Howling Commandos. Dum Dum Dugan and Jacques Dernier were both in their nineties and had been living in a nursing home for the last five years, but they weren't going to miss seeing Bucky again for the world.

After the group reunion photo had been taken, the four World War II veterans sat down on the sofa and caught up on each other's lives. Steve came by to visit every once in a while, but they hadn't seen Bucky since his supposed death back during the war, and they were eager to catch up and see how he was doing now that he was free from HYDRA's control. While that was going on, the rest of the group split off into their own conversation groups. Pepper talked to Wanda and Pietro about them finding jobs. Both of them were grateful for Tony and Pepper's generosity in accepting them onto the team, but the two siblings wanted to find their own jobs and make money on their own.

While Pepper was talking to them about different places they were interested in applying to, Rhodey and Same were sharing war stories while Kim and Ron left the room to spend some time alone. Thor and Jane were doing likewise while Doctor Selvig decided to head home. Darcy on the other hand was busy slow dancing with her intern, Ian. While all this was happening, Tony began talking to J.A.R.V.I.S. about living accommodations for Sergeant Barnes in the Tower. The Avengers had expanded greatly since the Battle of New York. In the last three years, the team's size had doubled. And now, they officially had one more member of the family.

* * *

 **Yes, I just dropped the bombshell that in this universe Steve is married post winter soldier. Who did he end up with, you ask? I'm not telling you. It's a surprise for the next Acolytes of Chaos fic. And in this universe, Bruce/Natasha never happened. S.H.I.E.L.D. was able to get General Ross off Dr. Banner's back so he could settle down at Avengers Tower in peace. Once that happened, he and Betty (his love interest from the Incredible Hulk solo movie for those who haven't seen it) got back together, and she fills the "calming the Hulk" role that Black Widow does in Age of Ultron. I didn't go into big detail on the whole trial because I didn't think I could really do a good courtroom scene.**

 **Next chapter: Readers of The Xehanort War already know what's coming next. Grab your tissues and prepare for lots of FitzSimmons feels.**


	28. Under Wraps

**2 more chapters left and Ripple Effects is done, people. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans, grab your tissues. It's time for some FitzSimmons feels. Spoiler warning for The Xehanort War.**

* * *

 **Episode 28: Under Wraps:**

 **The Playground – July 19, 2015**

 **During Kingdom Hearts 3**

"How did you get back?" Fitz asked with tears of joy in his eyes as he and Simmons broke apart from their first kiss. He'd come back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters after another unsuccessful attempt at finding out the origins of the Kree Monolith sitting in the lab to find Jemma Simmons, the girl he'd had a crush on for years, standing right there in front of it, shaken and coated in dirt, but nevertheless alive and well. There were hundreds of questions running through his mind, but he'd ignored them as he'd raced forward and given her a big damn kiss on the lips.

"It's a long story," she replied, taking a deep breath and reminding herself that this was real and she was finally home. "I'll tell you all about it at dinner. As much as I would love to catch up here and now, I've been running for my life for the past hour, and I need a nice, hot bath to clean the dirt and blood off my body." Fitz understood immediately and quickly lead her toward the bathroom a few levels down and helped get the bath ready. Reunions with the rest of the team could wait until after she'd gotten cleaned up.

While Simmons was soaking in the tub, he called the restaurant he'd wanted to take her to and placed the reservation. Since he figured that Simmons might feel uncomfortable and distracted in a crowded place with lots of noise because she was most likely shaken from whatever she'd gone through, he was able to ensure that the restaurant would have no other patrons during their meal. Lance Hunter had seen the two lovebirds reuniting and silently left them a wad of cash to pay for dinner, and it was surprisingly enough to book the entire restaurant in addition to paying for their meals.

Their evening together was bittersweet. Simmons was still reeling from her near death experiences on the planet, and she was going to need some therapy to deal with the trauma. Nevertheless, she and Fitz enjoyed their date together, although Simmons was a little overwhelmed by the menu options after subsisting on alien plants and Will's spare rations. The biochemist thought it was very sweet that Fitz had kept the reservation open for two months because he refused to give up hope that he'd find a way to bring her home. As they ate their dinner in the quiet of the empty restaurant, she told him about what had happened over there.

Fitz was fascinated by her descriptions of what the alien planet was like. He got a little jealous when stranded astronaut Will Daniels came into the story, but Simmons quickly clarified that she and Will were never a thing, which segued into the part of the story where she explained how she wound up back on Earth but not Will. Fitz hung on her every word as she explained about the two humans who'd arrived on the planet and told her and Will about the ancient conflict known only as the Keyblade War. He was initially skeptical of the whole explanation, but he kept his doubts to himself when Simmons explained how she had actually seen Terra summon his Keyblade and cast spells with it as proof.

While they waited for the waiter to bring them their change from the bill, Fitz called Hunter (who had volunteered to be their chauffer for the evening) to let him know they were ready to be picked up. A few minutes later, the new couple got into the car for the ride back to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. However before they returned to the Playground, Hunter informed them that they had one more stop he needed to make on the way back. After twenty minutes of driving, they pulled up outside another restaurant. Fitz and Simmons were confused. Even more so when Hunter asked them to come inside with him and told them he'd explain everything once they were inside.

"Excuse me," the hostess said as the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents walked inside. "Do you have a reservation?" Fitz was about to say something when Hunter beat him to the punch.

"No," the ex-mercenary answered bluntly. "But the closer you stand to the light, the greater your shadow becomes." Fitz and Simmons looked at each other in confusion as the woman's entire demeanor changed. When they came in, she'd appeared dismissive, as if they weren't worth her time. Now she was tripping over herself to help them. After saying that the rest of the "Whitmore party" was gathered inside, she led the trio towards a private room in the back of the restaurant.

"Hunter," Fitz whispered nervously. "What's going on?"

"I'll tell you in a minute," he replied as they walked into the private room to find a small group of people gathered around a large table with now empty plates. Seated around the circular wooden table were Bobbi, Mack, Agent May's adopted daughter Rinoa, a bald, muscular African American man, a Hispanic woman with shoulder length black hair, and skinny Caucasian man with light brown hair, and a young man in his early thirties with impossibly spiky black hair in a style that reminded Jemma of the white-haired Keyblade Wielder who had rescued her from that death trap of a planet. FitzSimmons were both confused by the presence of more S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and the two of them were beginning to suspect that there was something shady going on while Hunter pulled up chairs for both of them.

"It's great to have you back, Jemma," Bobbi greeted. "But how did you get back from wherever you ended up?" Fitz and Simmons looked at each other in surprise, and then to Hunter. Bobbi hadn't been at the Playground when they announced Simmons' return to Earth to the team, and Hunter hadn't even been in the room. So how did they know?

"I don't know what you mean," Simmons replied nervously, probing to see just what this whole interrogation was about. In response, Mockingbird raised an eyebrow indicating she didn't believe that for a second.

"I think you do," Agent Morse went on. "I saw the security footage. Not many people escape from an alien planet through a Corridor of Darkness, much less while wearing the coat of Organization XIII." Simmons' eyes widened as understanding dawned on her, while to her right, any doubt that she had made up the story of the Keyblade vanished from Fitz's mind. Everyone else at the stable exchanged looks. The two scientists were still frozen in shock, but their stunned silence told them everything they needed to know.

"Thousands of years ago," Mack explained. "There was an ancient conflict, called the Keyblade War."

"Where all sides fought over the light of Kingdom Hearts, shattering the world into hundreds of smaller pieces," Simmons finished. "I know. Terra told me." Now it was everyone else's turn to look confused. "What does any of that have to do with a secret meeting off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar?"

"Over the thousands of years since the Keyblade War," The bald man at the end of the table went on, picking up where Mack left off. "The knowledge of the ancient conflict and those associated with it was lost. But Keyblade Wielders have still visited Earth over the last eight thousand years. In 1914, employees of Whitmore Industries met two of them during an expedition to find the ruins of the lost civilization of Atlantis. After the expedition, the employees founded the Society of Advanced Cultural Knowledge, a secret society for people who know about the existence of the Keyblade and its history to search for archeological evidence of the Keyblade War and prepare the rest of the world for the day when the scattered fragments of the planet put themselves back together."

"And since you two lovebirds clearly know about the basics of the Keyblade and the conflicts associated with it," Hunter added. "We want you two to join the club." Fitz and Simmons both agreed. Simmons to learn more about the Keyblade and its history (she'd been fascinated by Terra's demonstration of what his weapon could do), and Fitz to support his new girlfriend. Once they agreed to join, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents proceeded to introduce the rest of the group assembled around the table. Even if they weren't the biggest believers in magic, FitzSimmons' inner scientists were thrilled to be learning new things.

* * *

 **TXW Spoiler Time: Basically, during The Xehanort War, Terra and Human!Luxord broke free of Xehanort's control and served as moles for the heroes in Organization XIII for a while before Xehanort discovered them. After that, they went on the run together with Sephiroth hot on their heels. Their first stop after fleeing the Castle That Never Was, they ended up on Maveth (the planet where Simmons was trapped between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Seasons 2 and 3), and dropped Simmons off on Earth before continuing to run from Sephiroth (who had been killed by Sephiroth when the One-Winged Angel caught up to the two fugitives). The reason she refers to Terra's hair as white is because after coming back, Terra is basically permanently stuck looking like KH2 Ansem's Apprentice Terranort, so he's stuck with the white hair.**

 **Just to clear up the identities of the other people around the table, aside from Rinoa, Mockingbird, and Mack, the other people at the table are Sweet, Audrey, and Milo from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.** **As for who the guy with the black hair is, players of Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep probably have a pretty good idea, but I'm not saying his name until next chapter. Speaking of which...**

 **Next chapter: A few familiar faces show up in Shibuya, Japan when a certain blue-haired man emerges from the Reaper's Game.**


	29. Reaper's Game

**I went back and changed the last chapter to remove a few characters whose presences I realized didn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. I had a cameo from Tarzan and Jane to show that in this universe, Sora's visit to Deep Jungle is still canon, but then I realized that it really didn't make sense with their characters to go the way of "stay alive for decades with Atlantean crystals". So I edited them out of the chapter and replaced them with more characters from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Deep Jungle is still canon in this story, I just thought that Tarzan and Jane would prefer living in the jungle over joining S.A.C.K. and having an extended lifespan.**

 **I also had to do some tweaks to previous chapters and to The Xehanort War because small throwaway lines didn't mesh with my overall plan. Nothing changed in the story, I just had to tweak some inconsistencies that didn't fit with the overall Acolytes of Chaos story.**

 **Only one chapter left, ladies and gentlemen. Almost over. More spoilers for The Xehanort War accompanied by mild spoilers for the Square Enix DS game The World Ends With You.**

* * *

 **Episode 29: Reaper's Game:**

 **Shibuya, Japan – August 22, 2015**

 **3 Weeks after Kingdom Hearts 3**

Isa took deep breaths as he placed his hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat. Three weeks after dying in what would later be called the Second Battle of the Keyblade Graveyard, he'd finally done it. He had won the Reaper's Game. Won a second chance at life. A second chance to atone for everything he'd done as an unwitting vessel of Xehanort. Ludor, the human self of Luxord, had already won three weeks ago, and had promised to wait for him when he came out. Looking around, however, there was no sign of the former Gambler of Fate. He was standing in an alleyway while people walked by on the streets outside.

A low growl from his stomach alerted the former second in command of the Organization to the fact that, since he'd been dead, he hadn't needed to worry about things like eating and staying hydrated. Now he needed to find something to eat, and he didn't have any money. _Either way,_ he thought to himself. _I might as well get out of this alleyway and do some reconnaissance of my surroundings. Find out where I am._ Recognizing that his hair might stand out a bit, the Luna Diviner tucked as much of his long hair inside his coat as possible while he walked out of the alley onto the street. Satisfied that he wasn't attracting any attention beyond the occasional sideways glance, he set off through the city streets in search of a map.

As he walked along, he removed the earrings he'd worn during his days in Organization XIII and tossed them into the first garbage can he passed. As he took them out, he'd felt relieved to touch his ears and find that they no longer had Xehanort's distinctive pointed shape. Other than the fact that his hair (which had lost the greyish tint it had when he'd been carrying a piece of Xehanort's heart) still went all the way down to his back, he was exactly how he'd always pictured himself looking like as an adult when he was a kid. An hour later, and he had absolutely no idea where he was. He couldn't read any of the signs and had no clue what the people around him were saying. And to top it all off, he was completely lost.

He was just about to experiment with seeing if he could still open Dark Corridors when he heard a familiar voice call out his name. He whirled in the direction of the voice to find Ludor making his way towards him dressed in what looked to be an expensive suit. Isa breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that his fellow (former) Organization member had come to his rescue. But then he realized that they weren't alone. After nine years of reconnaissance missions for the Organization, he know how to spot a tail when he saw one. The same went for the spies watching them from a nearby rooftop.

"Good to see you made it out of the Game in one piece, Isa," Ludor greeted as she shook the former number 7's hand. "I figured you might be hungry so why don't we grab a bite to eat before we get out of here." Isa nodded in agreement before warning his former subordinate that he was being followed. To his surprise, Ludor laughed and revealed that he already knew that, and his observers were past winners of the game he'd met a few weeks ago. After turning his head to reveal the small radio in his ear, Ludor informed the other people watching the former Organization members that they would meet in a café around the corner.

When they arrived in the café, Ludor pulled out some of the local currency and ordered them food while Isa went and found a table. Once the food had been ordered, the Gambler of Fate came over and sat down. Once he was seated, Ludor explained to Isa the phenomenon of "Tethered Worlds". Both men theorized that when Xehanort fell, Sora could (and most likely had) used the X – Blade to begin the process of putting the worlds back together, cutting off the Tethered Worlds from the rest of the cosmos. They were effectively stranded here. But apparently, they weren't alone.

"Turns out," Ludor went on. "That Riku and Kairi visited this world in a Tethered time period a century ago from these people's perspective. And they told the people they met along their journey in that period about the Keyblade War. Apparently the people they met were all employees of a businessman who was an old friend of Xehanort's fellow apprentice Eraqus. Anyway, when Riku and Kairi left, the businessman and his workers decided to start a secret society for people who know about other worlds, the Keyblade, Kingdom Hearts, the Heartless… all that stuff. And their goal was to eventually prepare the entire planet for the day when all the scattered fragments of the original World came back together."

"And they offered you a job and a place to live," Isa finished, guessing where he was going with the discussion. "I assume that's where you got the suit?" Ludor chuckled.

"Indeed it is," he answered. "And we aren't the first winners of the Reaper's Game from our side of the universe to end of stuck here. Have you ever heard of a Zack Fair?" Isa's eyes widened in recognition. The young man had been Sephiroth's first victim. According to Organization XIII's reconnaissance reports, he'd been a denizen of Olympus Coliseum, and had become a surrogate older brother for Cloud Strife in the wake of The Fall, before The One-Winged Angel murdered him a year later in an attempt to get his progenitor to embrace his inner darkness. In retrospect the fact that he'd been offered a second chance at life in the Game shouldn't have been a surprise.

"I take he he's part of this society too?" Isa asked, already knowing the answer.

"Indeed he is. And he's not the only one. You remember Riku's clone that Vexen made back in the days of the original Organization?" Now Isa was well and truly shocked. The Riku Replica going through the Reaper's Game was a complete surprise to him. And a little bit concerning. He had no idea if the fragment of Xehanort's heart used to make all of them vessels would still remain in the clone's heart. If that fragment still existed, so could Xehanort. His concern must have been written all over his face as Ludor quickly reassured him that the Replica no longer had a fragment of Xehanort's Heart. The old man's time travelling younger self had removed it before dropping the clone off back in his original timeline at the moment of his death.

With that out of the way, the two former Organization members continued their chat as their food arrived. While they ate their meal, Ludor explained that the Society of Advanced Cultural Knowledge would provide Isa with fake credentials and the means to find a job anywhere he chose. But he'd also explained that he, Zack, and the Replica were sharing a four-bedroom apartment on an island somewhere, and could use an extra roommate. Seeing how he had no money and nowhere else to go, the Luna diviner agreed, and an hour later, he and Ludor walked out of the city and into a nearby forest. Isa was about to ask what they were doing now when the Gambler of Fate called out to someone named "Gordon" that they were ready.

In a burst of blue energy, a man with an unsettlingly located patch of flesh where his eyes should be appeared out of thin air.

"I was wondering when you'd be done," the man, Gordon apparently, commented dryly. "Where to?"

"Headquarters," Ludor answered. "We'll need to bring my old associate up to speed on the history of this world and introduce him to the inner circle." With a nod, Gordon took the former Nobodies' hands and teleported them away in another burst of blue energy. When they arrived thousands of miles away, Isa sighed. He wanted to atone for the things he'd done as part of Organization XIII, but he knew that everyone would have a hard time trusting him if he ever got home. As it was now though, he had a chance at a fresh start to do some good and help this world. Even if Keyblade Wielders never set foot on this planet again, he could be satisfied with that.

* * *

 **Slight retcon to Zack's origin story. In The Xehanort War, I said that Zack and Cloud knew each other before Radiant Garden was destroyed by Xehanort after BBS, but then I realized that didn't make sense since non-Keyblade and non-Corridor travel between worlds was supposed to be impossible, since Gummi Ships aren't invented until after Birth By Sleep. So I changed Zack's backstory to being a permanent resident of Olympus Coliseum, and adjusted the dialogue references in TXW accordingly.**

 **Explaining the TWEWY mythos will take too long, so to make a long story short, the Reaper's Game is a competition where the souls of the recently deceased compete for a second chance at life.**

 **TXW Spoiler time: Isa and Ludor bit the dust at the end of The Xehanort War, and in the follow up story Regroup and Rebuild, both of them entered the Reaper's Game. They died when Aqua and Xion attempted to use their Keyblades to remove the piece of Xehanort's heart inside them (like how Xehanort used his Keyblade to remove his own at the end of Birth By Sleep to possess Terra), but Xehanort had planted a failsafe in all his vessels that killed them if the heart fragment was ever removed (the only way to remove them without killing the vessels is the Key to Return Hearts)**

 **For those wondering why Isa's Xehanort-influenced changed went away while Terra's didn't, it's because with Isa, Xehanort only used a small piece of his own heart to control his vessels while he transplanted his whole heart to possess Terra.**

 **Coming up next in the final chapter: In the wake of Baron Von Strucker's arrest, the remaining agents of HYDRA finally find a new (actually old) leader with the experience and charisma to galvanize the scattered branches of the organization into a cohesive whole. This is another one where readers of TXW and its follow-up, Regroup and Rebuild, already know who I'm talking about.**


	30. Back From The Dead

**This is it, ladies and gentlemen. The final chapter. It's been a blast writing this fic and I hope you all had fun reading it.**

* * *

 **Episode 30: Back From The Dead:**

 **Location Unknown – September 14, 2015**

 **2 Months after Kingdom Hearts 3**

"Sir!" a HYDRA technician called out. "There's something in the lab you need to see." Gideon Malick, former member of the World Security Council and currently the highest ranking member of HYDRA not dead or imprisoned, sighed in annoyance at the interruption of his research. He'd been going through the library of his study to dig up everything they had on the Kree Monolith. With HYDRA forced on the defensive following Von Strucker's capture, he'd realized that the only way for the ancient organization to achieve its goal of taking control of the world on behalf of its Inhuman master was for them to rescue her from wherever the portal kept her imprisoned.

Which was why he'd spent the last week looking through HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. Files to figure out everything they knew about the Monolith portal in order to formulate a plan. And why he was irritated that he was being interrupted for something that could be handled by Kebo or one of his other underlings. Just because he was de facto head of the terrorist group didn't mean that he had to oversee every minute detail of the agency's day to day operations. But the technician sounded nervous, and HYDRA agents didn't scare easily. So with both curiosity and resignation, he followed the technician down to the laboratory in the last remaining HYDRA base.

When they arrived, he was surprised to find a large black oval undulating against the far wall. It was clearly a portal of some kind. That much was obvious. But a portal to where? And how had it been created? Those questions were replaced by more pertinent ones as a lone figure clad in black leather stepped out of the man-sized black portal. Every HYDRA member in the room stared at the new arrival in a combination of shock, confusion, and awe. There, looking not even a day older than the day he'd been presumed dead aboard the Valkyrie, stood Johan Schmidt, the Red Skull, one of the most well-known leaders of HYDRA.

"Good morning," the Red Skull replied coolly. "I would introduce myself, but judging by the looks of awe on all of your faces, you all know who I am. I wish to speak with whoever is in charge of this facility." That finally snapped Malick out of his stupor. As acting HYDRA leader, he needed to step up and accept the honor of meeting with the Red Skull in person.

"Gideon Malick," he introduced himself calmly. "Acting head of HYDRA. Welcome back, Dr. Schmidt. It's an honor to have you back among us. But we're all wondering how did you end up here? And how did you survive all these decades?" Schmidt grinned like a shark and explained that the Tesseract had transported him to another planet, where its inhabitants had kept him in cryogenic storage until recently, when rivals of the man who imprisoned him freed him from his frozen cage. He'd made an alliance with them, and they had transported him back to Earth.

Gideon Malick accepted the explanation with a nod, realizing that there was more to the story that the great Red Skull would prefer to disclose in private. After ordering the nearest agent to fetch Schmidt the best food and drink they could get on the base, he and the no-longer-dead HYDRA leader retired to Malick's office to discuss the Red Skull's sudden return further, and get him caught up on recent events. Malick was fascinated by what the Red Skull told him of the Keyblade War and its effects, and by the alliance HYDRA had now entered into with this "Hellfire Club." But none of that really rocked him to his core more than the news that Jenova, the ancient Inhuman their organization had formed to serve, was dead. Killed by ancient Keyblade Wielders. And her son (in actuality a genetic experiment created from splicing her DNA with ordinary human DNA), Sephiroth, had recently been slain as well.

Once he got over the shock that HYDRA's mistress had been dead for centuries, it was Malick's turn for explanations. The two leaders of HYDRA spent the next several hours bringing Red Skull up to speed on the major events that had happened on Earth since his disappearance. Their infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Schmidt was impressed by Dr. Zola's ability to rebuild HYDRA without anyone else in the entire world realizing it), and eventual exposure. Captain America's survival and the formation of the Avengers. And finally finishing off with the current state of affairs for HYDRA as a whole.

Schmidt sat down in the desk chair of the office as he processed everything that had been revealed to him. He knew that the Allied powers would have eventually won the war, but he had not expected such radical changes in the times in the last seventy years. It was sad, however, that the state of HYDRA today mirrored the state of the organization back near the end of World War II: reduced to one final base, crippled and on the defensive against an enemy that refused to rest until HYDRA was dead. But with the assistance of Maleficent and her Hellfire Club, they could rebuild in secret, without anyone on Earth being the wiser.

Of course, Schmidt's survival had to be kept a secret, lest they attract the attention of Captain America and his Avengers. But with Corridors of Darkness, they could move troops and supplies around the universe without tripping any alarm bells for S.H.I.E.L.D. And Maleficent's masking spell that she'd learned from Loki himself could hide their armies from even the all-seeing eyes of Heimdall, gatekeeper of Asgard. _Yes,_ Schmidt thought to himself as he and Malick discussed his plans for the future. _With new resource and allies, HYDRA will once again become the power it once was. And Captain America, the Avengers, the Keyblade Wielders, and anyone who stands in our way, will burn!_

* * *

 **And with that, folks, Ripple Effects is over, and with it, the world building one-shots of the Acolytes of Chaos saga. It's been a lot of fun doing these little snippets of life in the AOC universe, but now I'm gearing up for the real meat and potatoes of the story I've been cooking up since before I started writing The Xehanort War. Next up in the pipeline for this saga is Kingdom Hearts IV: Connected Worlds. That will be when the one-shots end and the story finally starts moving forward.**

 **But before I get started writing Connected Worlds, I'm going to take a break for a week, then spend a month or two working on another fanfiction project. I'll have KHIV up at the beginning of June, but until then, I have a different sequel to work on. For fans of my YJ/Avengers Crossover Secret Identities, the first chapter of the sequel, Cut Off One Head, will be uploaded no later than a week from Friday.**


End file.
